Hi there, Been a long time reader and didn't really think about doing this until I was laid off from my job last Friday. I've always been fascinated with the "automated" trading aspect in the financial sector and never had the time to dive into it to play. I'm also pretty well versed in Java and C#. Anyhow, I'm curious if there's a way to monitor in real time all the U.S. based listings in the NASDAQ and NYSE and store it in my server. An example would be to have a database or a bunch of binary files in the thousands and keep it updated in real time from my broker's (TD Ameritrade) live data source. I'm not asking for hand me outs, but what I'm looking for is a point to the right direction to turn my little idea into a reality because I honestly have no idea where to start. I also intend to keep this thread as my journal of progress. Thank you all!
The first step is choose a broker that allows automation and has good commissions and is widely used. I would start by opening an account with Interactive Brokers. Also, it's impossible to substitute your job with income from trading right away. It's not going to happen overnight, so it would be best to look for another job (in case you need a steady income).
Thanks Travis, I've been looking at IB and will fill out the application tonight once I'm done going over their comissions, fees etc. As for money... I don't intend to make $ overnight or for a very long. I'm willing to put in time and work on this as my nightly/weekend/free time project. The novel idea of it doing trading on its own is more appealing than the idea of making money at this point. I am going to be looking for another job, but don't know how soon I can find one given the bleak market. None the less, I have a good savings cushion to sit on for a long time should the job market turn its rear cheek on me.
Yeah, I'd have to agree with the get a job and do this on the side approach (unless you can get hired somewhere). But since you have time without a job, you can get into papertrading/backtesting in the meanwhile.
The biggest problem here, is that most of the cheap real-time data-sources, won't let you monitor that many symbols at the same time. If you only want to monitor a 100 or so, you can just use Interactive Brokers and connect to the api with C# or java to do what you want.