No, this is a bit too simplistic view. Banks runs fully automated market making strategies just to mention one example. It can also be difficult to completely distinguish between a program for efficient execution and a program for generation of profit ("strategy trading"). Its a complex world. Regarding latency, take for example a look at this thread for a discussion on this (if you have not done it all ready): http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=161595&perpage=6&pagenumber=1 Latency becomes an increasing issue when increasing the frequency of your trading and for some business models it is essential. But don't make the mistake to think that people who cares about latency are in any way stupid. Who are "they" with the low returns that you refer to?
C#. But I am hesitant to walk into another flame war on which programming language is best nuclearphynance (the forum) has some discussion on why C# might be a good choice.
I used a combination, C++ for the server, C# for the GUI. The server was originally on Windows, now on Linux.
Some of the things you mention do not make much sense to me. I doubt that these "expert traders" or "whales" are not going be using retail platforms or technology for their trades, especially the ones they offer in Traders Expos. Your industry knowledge seems to be extremely out-dated... Seriously, why do you think people are discussing about automating their stuff on their own? Because retail environment sucks. I think people catch up in industry meetings / events hosted by exchanges or the appropriate press... and occasional private cocktail parties. Seriously, I've never heard of old school traders in Chicago or NYC going to Traders Expo as a catch up event. And whenever you go out drinking on Friday/Sat. nights, you see the same people over and over again. Maybe it's a Chicago or NYC thing, they crammed up all the industry people in a small box... Also, being skeptical is a very good thing. They should be skeptical about me. They should be skeptical about you. Of course, skeptism in this stage is "inductive" at best. There are no data set and information provided to conduct a deductive conclusion about what you say, (or anyone says). So you can't just shun out people and say, "They're struggling and never get it", if you are critisizing everyone for being inductive. As I mentioned, you in fact, can be the biggest contraversy to your own claims. Anyways... I hope you comment on my previous posts. I hope you understand that this discussion will only go in circles if you don't...
I think most of the people lose focus and only think about "sending" orders. But you have to understand the flip-side of having a fast network. It's to get your fills quickly / efficiently. I think everyone's gone through the frustration of delayed fills from your broker. A lot (not all) models and systems start managing trades after the acks are received from the brokers. Receiving acks are equally important during fast markets, and when you run a High Frick model, any bulk order can tip the model over.
Being harsh is fine. And no hard feelings. I'm only doing what any of my friends would do... Being critical and challenging each other's opinion. Debating and discussing is a very healthy thing for your brain. *Most of my trader friends are good hearted sadist.
From the ground up using Java. Not that I think it is the best language, just the one I know the best. 2002-03: Learned as much as I could about technical analysis, the different markets and tradable products. Did some manual trading, which was unsuccesful. 2005: I started coding up my system and back testing various trading ideas. Went live with my first system during the fall of 2005 with a 3K account at IB. While my first system was profitable and in theory should have made me some decent returns, I was not able to trade it full time due to various bugs and work related issues. Oddly enough the periods that the system was running were losing periods and I managed to miss the best winning periods. 2006-07: Continued to work on the system to smash any bugs that came up and improve the performance. System gets pretty stable and starts cranking out some real returns. 2008: System doing very well. Started working on my 2nd system and left my day at the end of July. Rolled out new system in Oct just in time to experience a nasty draw down period, but fortunately I stuck it out and the new system started performing far better than anticipated. 2009: System still performing very well and I continue to back test various trading ideas and making improvements to the system (mostly stability / scalabilty improvements). I probably have put in 2K plus hours coding and back testing over the last 4 years, but it was totally worth it.