I would say if you have to learn a programming language, learn Easylanguage from Tradestation. Multicharts also uses Easylanguage and you can use it with a number of different brokers and data providers. I think it's a fairly easy language to learn. I've just started to teach myself and it's a lot easier than when I had to learn Visual Basic for Excel. There are also tons of examples available all over the net and in books. You should be able to find an Easylanguage program that's similar to your method or borrow bits and pieces of other programs to make a program for your system.
I would confidently say that your system doesn't even work. How many of you guys with profitable automated systems found that your FIRST strategy that you ever programmed worked? Even if it did, I'm sure it took a lot of tweaking and testing. I programmed a number of systems before I had something profitable. Are you gonna pay some guy a few times at a couple thousand a pop before you get your holy grail. Learn to program yourself. Programming with any language for trading purposes is easy in programming standards. I'm sure I would've been able to do it in high school with what I knew then. Shit is easy yo. Hard part is actually coming up with something profitable....
Thank you for responding to my thread even though you evidently didn't have the time to actually read my posts.
Start learning a language and find a programmer who will answer your questions/error messages. Sure it'll be time consuming but this way if/when your system fails, at least you learned something... Incase you decide to proceed and learn for yourself, here are some guidelines to follow: First: trust and believe that you WILL do this. Second: break your idea into itty bitty steps and pieces which you can attack one at a time (once you start writing a code, youâll learn that itâs easier to deal with error messages when you have smaller segments at work). Third: get a beginner book and download the entire help menu â treat it as your bible, when you find yourself staring at error messages go back to the first step and pray to the help menu. Finally, start coding.
When I first started trading, a thimble held more water than my brain contained knowledge of how to program. Not all that long ago, I found myself at the same fork in the road you now face. For me, the answer was simple - begin the process of learning to program. As others have already suggested start with a platform which isn't super complicated - Tradestation, Amibroker, Wealth-Lab, Trade Navigator (and I am sure many others) each use their own programming language or a 'pseudo-code' type of language allowing even first time programmers to 'get the hang of things' pretty quickly, and without a huge amount of effort. Place a premium on a platform which also has numerous examples of code written by others where you can either 'copy / paste' the code directly into your own project or tweak the code (ever so slightly) to create an output closer to your ideal. Look for a robust forum comminity as well, or failing that, Customer Support / Tech Support Staff which routinely provide helpful, fast and correct answers to your questions. You'll be using these folks quite a bit at first. Many people are often willing to assist someone as they attempt to learn the ropes. Make sure the platform you choose has many of these types of people also using the platform. Download and review the help files for the particular platform chosen, print them out, and keep them close. You'll find yourself reviewing the help files constantly at first. Each of the programs mentioned should come with a free trial period, so you can 'test drive' the functionality, as well as, visit the various forums and have your questions answered by tech Support. Lastly, you'll want whichever platform you choose to have the ability to interface with a number of brokerage firms, rather than, locking you in to just one firm. Along the same lines, choose a platform which allows for the data input from the widest variety of markets (Equities, Futures, Options, Forex, Bonds, etc.). After all, the whole point of learning to code your strategy is to allow you to trade multiple markets. Make sure you have that ability before you start. HTH. - Spydertrader
EasyLanguage is an English-like programming language. If you can articulate (ie write it down on paper) your "system" in English, you are half way in having your system programmed in EasyLanguage. check out this example: Code: If High > High[1] then buy ( "Order_ID#1" ) next bar at market ;
Thunderdog, I find it interesting in the way you posed your question how your first sentence could limit responses. I have programming knowledge and have not hired a programmer to automate my trading. I don't think sc85 answered your question, although others basically recommended you learn to program. If sc85 has the experience he claimed, he should be able to confirm that you do not have to disclose your strategy. As a programmer, I'm more concerned about leaking my strategy to the dealer/vendor, by using their built-in programming language in their trading system. Others mentioned a few systems. I base mine on MetaTrader. MT4 is nice, but could potentially expose your strategy to the dealer/vendor (if you are paranoid like me, as you seem to be). So I base mine on MT3 http://www.metaquotes.net/files/mtapi.zip You will need a dealer that allows MT3. As long as the program delivered to you by the programmer does not contain any "phone home" type sneaky disclosure of your strategy, you should be able to "load" your strategy into this program and the programmer would never have to know your strategy. If you are talking about a real-time internet-capable program (sockets/TCP/IP), I don't think you (as the non-programmer customer) would be able to verify that the programmer didn't include such a sneaky back-door. Depending on how powerful your computer is and how complex your strategy is, it would be faster if your strategy is compiled in, rather than using a slower "scripting/interpreted" language to parse your strategy on the fly. But even then, a method to compile your strategy into a separate module on demand, could be designed. You can look at the simple languages used in MT4 and Trade Strategist http://www.snowmintcs.com/products/tradestrategistmac/index.php to get an idea like Tums has shown. I would require the programer to take your english description (similar to the languages used in the mentioned systems) and require the program to parse this strategy to later be executed. If your trading frequency is much less than real-time, as in non-intraday; you could run the delivered program offline (never connected) to the internet/ other machines, no modem etc. and deduce say daily signals. That is taking paranoia to an extreme. Heck, if you only need daily signals, Trade Strategist may suit you. What's a NDA going to do? It is the difference between power and authority. And you have to verify that it was breeched. But then it is too late.
If you were really paranoid about it. You could always add a couple of extra rules there( only during certain time periods you wouldnt usally use, Only if its a monday etc etc). Throw in an indicator or 2(MA, RSI BB's, whatever). Reverse some of the logic. If its a high, make it a low, a bit of 'smoke and mirror' action. So even if the programmer tried to use it as is it would just look like another useless system Once you get it then you can just open the code and cut out/ reverse those bits yourself. This will require you to learn a little about programming. Buts its a hell of a lot easier to get to a point where you can look at some code and have a fair idea what it means compared to writing your own from scratch. Another approach would be to semi-automate it. create alerts so that it brings up the markets that meet the bulk of your criteria and just manually confirm the last part urself or the specific entry signal.
smart idea. Never thought of adding superfluous nonsense. The problem with picking a specific language or platform, is down the road you may find it does not perform what you need. How do you pick the correct language or platform to put all that valuable time to learn? There is no source of information on this topic for traders new to programming. "ATS for dummies" would be a bestseller in the trading community. No one mentioned Amibroker. I've seen several recommend it here on ET.
For someone getting into it while there are a number of options out there IMO, there are only a couple of REAL options. They being Trade Station, or Ninja Trader. There is a lot of support out there And while each language has its own rules a lot of ideas and concepts are transferrable so its not like you start from scratch again. But the only thing you can do is read up on peoples opinions on these forums and other sites and make a decision that seems right for you at the time.