Hello all, First time poster here , but I hope to return to this forum often. Just a quick background of myself, I'm a newbie to trading, but I do have some fundamentals in finance such as basic options pricing, some fundamental analysis, knowledge of risk/return measures (sharpe, treynor). I also have a couple portfolios through TDAmeritrade but I wouldn't really call that my trading account. I am interested in algorithmic trading using Matlab and/or VBA, and am seeking some advice on what I can do to get started. I picked up "Quantitative Trading" by E.P. Chan, where he uses mostly Matlab examples, and am about halfway through the book. I also use MATLAB by Attaway and Excel 2007 by Walkenbach as references. I would consider myself a 3/10 in terms of C++ programming skills. Some specific questions I had are: 1) What would you consider the most useful programming language for algorithmic trading? back-testing? 2) Which brokerage would you recommend? I've read some good things about IB (which I'm assuming stands for Interactive Brokers). 3) What kind of securities would you recommend I start in? Is there a progression I can make towards more complex securities? 4) Similarly to #3, what kind of strategies should I consider at this stage, and progress towards? 5) Are there any algorithmic-trading specific references/resources you could recommend? Any experiences you could share? I have been reading as much of this forum as I could for a while, but still at this point I really don't know if I'm asking the right questions. If there are other things I should be aware of, I would greatly appreciate any input. Thank you!