I am seeking to develop a simple program: That can draw trendlines, and automatically execute an order get in a position within 1% of a trendline (of it reaching within 1% of support or resistance) and get out of it drops 1% below it (or above it if I am shorting) (thereby the max loss is 2%). -and it just needs to scan all stocks and futures and do this and do it automatically My question is: What is the best platform to do this on, What else would I need to do this (besides data feed and programming knowledge) Thanks.
You are likely to receive many responses to this question espousing the various benefits of [insert your favorite language] over [insert your most despised language]. The thread will then probably degenerate into an ill-defined argument on platforms and languages. My advice is simply this.....Don't. Don't develop your own program. There are many existing systems out there that will do exactly as you have described. Why spend time on this when you could be spending time ensuring what you want to do has the best chance of being profitable? Existing systems are also likely to have received far more development and testing time than you could possibly hope to provide on your own. So unless: - You want to do this as an educational exercise. - You have some particular requirements that you have failed to mention Don't do it. Spend your time developing and testing the trading system itself.
Per your PM, here's a list of existing platforms that may have the functionality you require. I have little experience with any of these, but your likely to find a lot of info by searching ET. Note that some commerical products are paired only with specific brokers while others support a wide range of execution providers. <b>Commercial products: (no particular order)</b> Tradestation http://www.tradestation.com/ Multicharts http://www.multicharts.com/ Ninjatrader http://www.ninjatrader.com/ MetaTrader http://www.metaquotes.net/ Sierra Chart http://www.sierrachart.com/ Seer http://www.seertrading.com/ OpenQuant http://www.smartquant.com/openquant.php X_Trader https://www.tradingtechnologies.com/xtrader Traders Studio http://www.tradersstudio.com/ <b>If you want to be able to customize, there are a bunch of open source projects:</b> See discussion of some here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=234736 It seems marketcetera is no longer open source. Tradelink seems to be quite popular. The following are some I've come across that appear to still have active development: Tradelink (C#) https://code.google.com/p/tradelink/ Algo Trader (Java) https://code.google.com/p/algo-trader/ JBookTrader (Java) https://code.google.com/p/jbooktrader/ Cyan Spring ATS (Java) http://www.cyanspring.com/index.php
I would define it as connecting 3 or more consecutive high points or low points in a graph - and extending a line from that