I have been working on implementing a semi automated futures trading strategy. The idea is the system will generate alerts, and I will use my discretion on wether or not to follow them. The goal is to help me stay disciplined and not make low probability impulse trades. Now I am not sure what software is recommended to do this. Ideally the software should be able to send alert emails to my cell so I can do other things while waiting for a signal. I was surprised but esignal can't do this. help appreciated
you can do this in esignal but it's somewhat complicated, as it involves drawing on the charts and building buttons on the chart. you can most certainly email from esignal as well.... there is an Alert.Email function. if you want to use a real GUI with drag and drop design.... tradelink is c# and c++.... supports esignal, is 100% free and open source and comes with examples of simple grey box setups like this. http://tradelink.googlecode.com
Simple is to call a one line batch file that can send email to your phone. Try sendemail.exe, lightweight SMTP, written in perl. Need nothing extra to run it. Another choice is Blat. Google either and they are the first links. Esignal was mentioned, example, lookup shellexecute stuff to call exe from efs, etc
I believe Ninjatrader will let you spit out emails using their Ninjascript programming language (basically C#). Their documentation is pretty decent, so even if you're not a programmer, if your system logic is fairly straightforward, it should be relatively painless to do. If you are using a broker that Ninja supports (IB for example), you could program the alert setup in to Ninja and then place the orders yourself in IB when you get them. Since Ninja is free unless you actually place live orders via their system, it works out nicely.
I've used the page alert that tradestation uses for it's strategies. Problem was the strategies I was using didn't allow enough time for me to get very far away from my computer or I would just miss it. 5 - 30 seconds between alert and fill. So I ditched the whole thing and just turned up my speakers. The guys that run The Intentional Trader run a strategy similar to what I used. However, theirs seems to be a bit more robust than mine. I'm not saying you shouldn't try it, I just didn't have very good luck with it. Also, At&t text messaging is slow in my area.
Futures trading is a full-time job. You must be on top of things. Emails often take a few seconds to be delivered. In the meantime, the market can move several ticks or even a few points. The slippage can cost you a lot.
I've had something like that set up but found that it only made me lazy and didn't really add value. Just learn your setups and trade them!