So, what did you decide ? Are you going to start working on this project ? If so, I think it's better to release it early even if incomplete so that you recruit help as early as possible.
Still undecded. I cant open my commercial software because of various reasons. The options are: a) hire one developer to work on it b) buy someone elses code open it up and develop with comunity c) buy code + hire anyone willing to offer his code? Price will depend on maturity and robustness... Of course, it has to meet those citeria from the begining of the thread. Will post decision shortly
Puzzled by the anti-GUI. A properly implemented GUI doesn't load the core trading platform. Neither does backtesting or forward testing code as it sits there - not affecting live trading code - unless called. As various people want various things, you need to either accommodate a lot of what people want or have the interfaces for people to implement their own add-ons. I played with jsystemtrader a lot, but there were a number of errors and some odd structure, making it difficult to modify to work correctly. Managed to implement a variety of custom technical indicators. Major flaw was no trade until the current candle was over. A lot can happen in part of a minute. Need something that updates indicators for TA on tick data, or at least the filtered tick data from IB, and allows trades based on that update. jbooktrader is an example of something that doesn't offer enough. By just looking at the book, they leave the TA price people behind. Their guide doesn't match the distribution either. So do I modify that to provide the TA stuff I trade with? I like the idea of being able to forward test the actual algo code against the code that will actually be trading the algo live. Otherwise you're testing: the testing/opto code, the testing algo, the live algo and the live algo driver. If they're already integrated... Having a core trade platform sounds great, but why not have a GUI sitting on the side for adjusting things like position sizes on the fly, and provide simple things like: enter long/short, increase position, decease, reverse, exit. Trivial to add, and attracts more user base. Particularly if one can java code in their own buttons.