JMowery, there is a lot of good advice already posted in this thread but I'll throw out a few more thoughts... I'm new to trading but worked professionally as a programmer for many years. A few months ago "learning to trade" became my full-time focus and I needed to choose a platform as you are doing now. I did not do an exhaustive search... I was anxious to get started so I talked to a few traders, did a bit of research online, and decided Tradestation would meet my needs for now. So far I'm pleased with the decision. As a beginner I think the best thing about Tradestation is that it has everything I need in a single application: quotes, charting, historical data, automation, Time & Sales, Level2, strategy backtesting, stocks, futures, options, forex, etc... no integration headaches. There are other similar all-in-one applications like Esignal that I have not evaluated but are probably as good. I too am attracted to the notion of strategy automation, and I have the skillset to build apps using a variety of technologies, but until I can trade profitably I want to keep the time I spend on technical issues to an absoulte minimum. I invested a few days time to attend a tradestation easy-language programming course. I would highly reccommend doing this with whatever platform you choose... it significantly reduced my learning curve and I'm now much more productive with the tool. I expect the day to come when I will want the flexibility and performance automating strategies using a language like C# and writing directly to a broker/fcm API, but that is potentially years away and even then I expect to still use a tool like Tradestation to do rapid prototyping of strategies. As for downsides, I do get some data delays but I would categorize them as annoyances as they have not been significant to me yet. Usually a few times each day there is a pause in my tick data that lasts anywhere from a few seconds up to ten seconds. Also the debugger is very weak... nothing like the powerful source debuggers that we're used to with modern development platforms like .net. To sum, my recommendation is to choose an all-in-one platform, focus on trading, and leave the API development for further down the road.
JMowery1987. Programming intentions. I'd say forget it. You are one of the many who won't make your fortune in trading.
Champion - don't discourage the boy....several hedge funds are doing quite well with fully automated approaches. (Of course, we have the venerable John Henry who began this mech-approach years ago and he is down HUGE lately). No question however, we may be years (decades ?) away from the time when machines will consistently beat experienced human traders with razor-sharp intuition. IBM created "Big Blue" to beat chess champions, right ? Where's their "Big Blue" for beating TRADING champions ? Bottomline: THEY CAN'T DO IT....much harder to beat the market than to win at chess.
Much harder yes but also much more profitable for those who succeed and thus strong motivation for many to try. Chess has discrete rules, the market, unfortunately, does not. As to Champion's post, statistically I'm sure he's right, most who try will fail. Such is the way with many things. Still if those who have succeeded in the past had adopted that negative attitude and never tried then they would not be where they are today.
Who said I wanted to make a fortune? Read before you post. Once again for the 3rd or 4th time, why do you think I strive to learn now when I am young. I will guarantee Champion that I could have said the same thing to you when you first started. So again, use that thing we call a mind. I still thank those who are supportive in my quest for learning. I have been doing very well just trading without automation, I will stick with that while still studying up on automated trading. Thanks for the help
Thanks for the post... I'll probably just play around with the API's until I get confortable that my strategy can work in a live environment. For now, I'm just learning, gathering resources, asking questions. It might very well be 5 years, maybe even 10 years, but like I said, I want to learn now. And again, thanks to all of those who have provided constructive replies, I think the ones who say "You will fail" really are the losers themselves, because they are just trying to down someone who can potentially be better than them in the future. So I like people who try things different and put in 110% to do what they want to do. I love trading, I love technology, and I'll continue to work hard to learn what I'm doing. I just tried Forex trading as well, brought in a lot of money with a demo account, but I'll only play in the demo, but good practice for day-trading. Still having a lot of fun with all of this. School starts soon, so I'll only be able do some swing trading, who knows, maybe I will open a Forex account. I will also study up on programming C# and such. Plenty of stuff in this thread
Sounds like me! It will require some work, but if you are comfortable with C#, you might want to try QuantDeveloper by SmartQuant. It is two things: a back-testing / trading environment, as well as a library of trading modules that you can sew together using C#. It does come with a couple of simple example data sets to get you started. It is pricy, but I think worth the price, time, and effort to come up to speed. It has a connection to IB for trade management. It comes with a sample ATS to get you started. You might want to register with QuoteTracker and/or IQFeed to get at historical data. I've written a few utilities to get IQFeed historical data loaded directly into QuantDeveloper. Disclaimer: I'm not related to the company, am just a satisfied user.
If you know C++, learn network programming in Java and start downloading data with URLConnection objects. You'll quickly end up with an panoply of programs downloading and processing data at no cost. I've even figured out a way to get real-time data, for free also.
Yup, I have learned a ton from ET message boards, seen what has seperated a good trader from a bad trader, learned more about what successful traders do, and understand how much effort it will require to do this full time. So many routes to take. I do understand that I'm going to need a lot more capital to actually start doing automated trading. So I am determined to do it the old fashioned way to generate enough money. I still think it is funny, that the thing I love to do, I almost can't do, because I don't have enough capital which is almost essential to be successful. It would almost take me 5 years at the current job I have now and, if I decided to go to college as well, and work full-time, it could take even longer. So I'm extremely lucky I met someone that has been helping me along the way. I have one more semester of school left, and I'll take that time to learn more programming in C# and C++ and I'll do some swing trading while i'm in school, after that, I'll have to see if I'm up to the challenge of being a full time trader. I know the numbers, only around 10% of novice traders actually make it. I'm not saying right now I'm in that 10% bracket, but I'm definately going to put in the most effort I can possibly do to beat that other 90% and be profitable. I'm not really in this to get rich, of course everyone dreams of driving a ferrari, living on an island sipping on some crazy drinks and stuff, but just making it so I can be profitable and be independent and do something that I enjoy would be enough success for me then I could ever imagine from where I have come from. I'm not "poor", but after I lost my father, I'm as close as it could be to being poor without actually being that, so the thought that I could actually be successful in the stock market, was only a dream a few years ago, but now that I am actually a participant, it is only myself I have to blame if I do well or poorly. So I will work hard to be one of those success stories Thanks for the great posts again, I hope this thread is motivating for other people that are willing to put in the effort.