Newbie wants advice

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by waditude, Sep 3, 2011.

  1. waditude

    waditude

    Hello all,

    I would like to automate a fairly simple strategy that I currently cannot trade because I have a day job. The main thing I need it to do is to place and cancel orders depending on what the broader (stock) market is doing. It will have to monitor how many positions are currently open so that it will know what funds are available for orders. I expect the average holding period to be about one week.

    I have some programming experience but no expertise. I am willing to learn a new programming language and do the programming myself and am looking to minimize my trading costs.

    Who would you recommend as a broker? I heard that IB may be a good choice for this.

    What is the easiest programming language that I would have to learn to use IB (or another broker that you recommend)

    I would like to do this without purchasing expensive datafeeds, etc. as my automated trading would only begin with perhaps $20K - $30K and I cannot justify a lot of overhead.

    I thank you in advance for your advice.

    waditude
     
  2. jetus

    jetus

    You should look into Sierra Charts.

    It is inexpensive, interfaces with all the major brokers, has many options for data-feeds, and includes data if you don't want to use a third party data feed.

    But most importantly for you, it allows you to automate strategies in an excel like worksheet. So if you can input formulas into excel, you should be able to start experimenting with your rules very easily.

    It has allowed me to build and test my strategy step by step. Eventually I could see it going to a programmer, but at least I can hash out much of the logic before hand.

    Here is a great example of how easily users were able to build and share several custom indicators.

    https://www.sierrachart.com/support...ght=Cumulative+AskVolume+BidVolume+Difference