This is not going to be easy, but I have all the time in the world and if I do not do this, I just piss my money away scalping for ticks. My problem in trading is emotional more than picking the right trades. I quit trades too quickly, then second guess myself, I suppose these problems can occur with a well "trained" bot, as one can override trades but that is also a situation that can be programmed with stops. The gambler mentality is to do something, constant biofeedback, akin to endorphins by getting an IM on the iPhone. I am 64 and I used to be a mainframe Assembler/ Unix C programmer for nearly 20-years. I am taking an Udemy class on python and IB API's, a little dated course for $49. The instructor is Indian and he has done a lot of these courses for Oanda API etc. I have downloaded Anaconda as well. Looking at the language is not the hard part. Programming price action will be the challenge. I will distill the best buy sell setups not using anything but prior highs and lows with determination is we are in a up/down channel, breakout or trading range. Moving average is the only indicator I care to look at. Two types of orders will be used; stop for breakout and limit for trading range.
If you have never used Python, then you might want to be aware that some libraries you might want to use may not be available for the version of Python you want to use. Depending on what you try to do, this may or may not be a problem. I bought a book for using Zipline (Quantopian) for creating a backtesting enviromment (Trading Evolved by Andrew Clenow) and it was a nightmare trying to get it to work. I eventually gave up. He suggested several modifications to the Zipline source to try and get it to work. Good luck with the project.
what you describe should be quite simple for someone with your background. I coded all our algos in NinjaTrader because I did not want to use a particular broker API. I just connect to broker of my choosing. It has full power of c# Best of luck.
Good luck man. Although if you were a C programmer you could have picked up Java quite easily as well. But python is fine. Trading with a BOT is only a bit less emotional than trading without one. When on a winning streak trading with a BOT is easy, you just let it do its things, happy days. But when it is on a losing streak, i can guarantee you will start second guessing the BOT at some point. And many times you might be correct in second guessing it and that will just reenforce poor discipline and you will end up missing big winning trades as well. Personally i would tell you to enjoy your retirement doing something else instead, but if this is your passion then go for it.
Dang bot...sorry no good lousy bot...scumbag bot...idiotic bot....clueless bot.....and and so on an on and on...
I think programmers are general better off with systematic auto bot trading. Better personality fit. No garantees of profits, but you might lose less. I often go full tilt when doing discretionary trading, im only saved by not doing discretionary trading very often at all. But when i do it doesnt end well.
I hear you, man! I just like the challenge. Of course, it is a lot of work but also satisfying. I have a therapist and psychiatrist already, now I need a coach too? I just rather learn Python. Udemy is great! I have dabbled into Java, C++, Perl, and actually, miss my former(younger) coder self...
I wouldnt put my money at risk with the Python, weak duck typing system. I prefer something a bit more type safe.
Going from 20 years of functional programming to OOP is not as easy as some make it sound. IMO, a non-programmer can pick up OOP more quickly than a pro functional programmer. Of course, once the pro catches-on, s/he will eventually surpass the non-programmer's capabilities. EDIT: The old school pro will tend to avoid OOP as much as possible. Essentially using that OOP language as though it were a purely functional language--to the extent possible.