I need some software to help keep a trade blotter without my staying up all night entering trades. Is Tradelog the best; are there any good competitors I can check out. I use IB and Watley. Thanks.
I was wondering if there was software out ther like Tradelog, but in addition to basic Tax related stuff, it also showed you the amount of time spent in a trade, the amount of profit/loss per amount of time in trade, amount won/lost in longs/shorts, allow one to "mark" a trade (was a pair, crutch pair, scalp, momentum, sector, relative strenght, etc etc, ?) then show you basic analysis on those marks? I could think of a million things that would add science to analysing your trades, I was wondering it there was software out there that handles it? BTW, I see that Tradelog allows the importing of Interactive Brokers statements - that is a must... nitro
i am the designer of Traderprofile software, which does most of the things you asked about. However, I decided that manual input of trades would not be feasible for most day traders, so the software only works if your b/d cooperates and arranges for your clearing data to be sent to the Traderprofile server automatically. We have talked to Watley and they have some indicated some interest in supporting TraderProfile, and we plan on contacting IB shortly. You can find details at www.traderprofile.com
Traderprofile looks like the beginning of a good program...You say you plan on contacting IB - what for? It is possible to download IB statements and save them as text. Parsing the text file is really easy...?? nitro
The advantage of getting files directly from the clearing firm is that you as a trader don't need to do anything. My concern with allowing a trader to upload daily files is that you might, for some reason, miss a file or some other problem would develop. The routines for processing trade data in order to accurately analyze them are complex, and unless the transaction data is 100% complete and processed in the correct date/time order, it could start a chain reaction of possible errors. In the real world, most clearing data is not composed only of simple buy and sell transactions, there are busted trades, cancels and corrections, bookkeeping transactions and trade support transactions, like portions of bullets which have to be segregated out of the analysis. For overnight trades, there are issues such as stock splits and dividends which must be factored in as well. It took 2 years to write the software so that all such situations are automatically identified. To support IB formats, we have to come to a complete understanding of how all the bookkeeping transactions are coded. Perhaps I am overstating the difficulties that might be encountered by allowing users to upload statements themselves. If you can send me a sample portion of IB's data I can evaluate it' s suitability. (Right now the software only works with clearing data from SLK and InstiNet Clearing. We've checked out Penson data and don't think it would be too difficult. Who does IB clear throught anyway? P.S. The software does not currently support tagging your trades with your own categories..but it is a good idea that I have thought about before. It would not be difficult to do, and will probably be included in a future release.