folks, regards to everyone, for a number of months now i have been trying to find - develop a trading platform that would allow me to trade in long options positions automated (opening long positions in calls in a symbol instead of a long position in shares and long positions in puts instead of short positions in shares). i have tried the quantconnect platform but haven't been able to make it work i also tried a product that works as an add on to the tradestation platform but after some testing i determined that it doesn't work at all. so, i'm searching for a way to automate trading long options positions. currently i'm making all trades by hand after i receive the email alerts but it would be preferable to find a method to automate the entries and exits as this could allow me to evaluate faster strategies that hold a lot of promise if i could find a method to trade them instantly. ¿does anyone know of any platform or system that could open and close long positions on options following email alerts? i have a number of strategies on tradestation and every time there is an uptrend or downtrend begins or ends the platform generates an email alert like the following: the subject line reads: TradeStation : Chart Analysis Alert for -instrument- by -indicator- (inputs) and this is the body of the email: Thu 3/21/2019 11:13 PM TradeStation : Chart Analysis Alert for -instrument- by -indicator- (inputs) Info: Price crossing over average Source: -indicator(inputs) Occurred: 22-Mar-19 01:13:42 Price: 00.00 i can change the text on info to anything i wanted to, for example: buy call, sell call, buy put, sell put, etc. the ticker for the symbol that generated the alert is always included so i think it should be possible to create an automated system that received these alerts and bought and sold options through ib's api. ¿does anyone think this could this be feasible? ¿does anyone know of any system that executed trades based on emails or other signals? very well, all the best, thanks, regards.
This is a very convoluted approach to auto trading....using a platform to generate signals, send an email, and then have another platform parse the emails and use those for a signal. Just look for a platform that can auto trade options and eliminate the email step.
You asked about this before What does instant mean in the context of options? Are you talking about sending market order(s) or data feed is needed to price correctly? Are you talking about trading the nearest expiration weeklies? Is closing to be automated as well? How important is reliability ... Is it acceptable to miss an alert? What's acceptable delay between alert and order placement? So many potential issues. I assume that for some reason you are unable to generate alerts using IB or third party data feed.
the kind of system i have in mind would place the trades 2 or 3 seconds after an alert has been generated. my strategies are nowhere near high frequency trading as positions are typically held for several hours and sometimes days. market orders should not be used for automated options trading; i want to use limit orders between mid market and the ask to buy or bid to sell. the strike prices for the contracts to be traded would also be selected adaptively, a number of points above or below the price when the alert was generated. the system should buy the contracts automated when a trend has started and also sell them once it is over. the strategies i have developed work nicely and the emails alerts have also been functioning without issue over the last several weeks that i have been sending them to myself and placing all trades by hand. i would think that setting up a system like i have in mind would not be too hard for experienced programmers. now that i think of it, a number of open source platforms in different programming languages like c#, python, java and others should be able to do what i have in mind. if reliability was perfect and slippage on options was manageable, i could use faster strategies that take less risk and generate very good results (by slippage when using limit orders i refer to how close to the bid one can buy and how close to the ask one can sell using automated limit orders). if this kind of slippage is significant, i would have to pay the entire spread and use more of a swing setup. i'm using alerts generated by tradestation because not all of the components that make up my strategies exist or can be replicated on other platforms. on the other hand, i want to use ib's api because tradestation does not make an api to clients for them to place orders. as far as i know, ib's platform cannot even trade strategies automated but they do charge the lowest commissions + fees and their api is the best.
This sounds like a VERY bad idea. IMO, retail accounts should execute option order manually so they have an opportunity to view current markets to make better choices and have a process to find liquidity. I never assume the mid-point is a place that is "fair" and poor executions in options can cause a much larger cost to your trading than market orders in equities.
Yes, this would be feasible depending on the email provider and tools available to access those emails. For example, if it is a gmail account, then there are libraries that exist for sending and reading emails via automation. For .NET, there is this: https://www.nuget.org/packages/Google.Apis.Gmail.v1/ I've used it before and it works. Also, if you use gmail, an easier method might be to poll your atom feed: https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom It will give you a summary list of your emails and it might have enough information in it to do what you want. But it might not. Either way, you are going to have to do some custom programming.
sprstpd, qlai, thanks. i will be studying the resources you have shared. it seems like this will be quite a task for a non programmer like myself as most of the stuff i have gone over makes no sense to me, but i will be putting the time in to make this work. thanks.
Hi RTW, I don't think there is anything out there, capable of doing what you are looking for out of the box. However, if that's what you want, it can sure be built. I am the maintainer of www.turingtrader.org, a project containing many building blocks needed for this project. I also provide R&D services through my company, www.bertram.solutions. Please pm me, in case you are interested. Thank you, Best regards, Felix