should I use dynaorder, tradebolt or other softwares?

I have dissected my strategy into several simple ones (such as buy at the open of the next bar if the open price of the next bar is higher than the previous bar's low and stop at the previous bar's low - 1 tick, short ABC if hereafter ABC goes above xxx and then falls belowxxx, etc.)

I have implemented these simple strategies and created a few buttons in eSignal's EFS. When a button is checked, the simple strategy associated becomes active and the EFS keeps evaluating the quotes and deciding whether to send or modify orders.

In most time I just watch the charts and television to decide which simple strategies to turn on or turn off and let my EFS code to fine tune the exact entry or exit points.

Therefore basically I have used EFS to implement several predefined condional orders which are simpler than the automatic trading system people are talking on this forum while more complex than the conditional orders than that IB TWS allows.

Now my problem is which tool I should use to bridge eSignal and IB TWS. The candidates are dynaorder and tradebolt. Do they both meet my requirements? What are the pros and cons of them respectively?

Tradestation itself comes with integrated trading api in its easylanguage, however I am not sure whether I am able to create some buttons on the chart to interact with the script to turn on/off certain strategies or not.

Any suggestion or comment is greatly appreciated.

- Clearpicks

 

Clearpicks,

Have you created order buttons within the esignal chart? I didn't realise you could do this.

Runningbear

 

Runningbear,

The things that those integrated trading buttons in eSignal can do are very limited, therefore I use EFS to draw a few buttons on the chart. Whenever a button is toggled, a specific strategy is activated/deactived by turning on/off a flag (boolean variable) in the same EFS. The pseudocode seems like


function toggleButtonA
{
strategyA = ! strategyA;
drawTextRelative(.............................., "Button_A");
}


function main()
{
if ( getCurrentBarStatus() == BARSTATE_ALLBARS ) {
drawTextRelative(.............................., "Button_A");
}
if ( getCurrentBarIndex() == 0 ) {
if ( strategyA ) {
// all codes related to strategy A are here
// send buy/sell orders here
}
}
}


I heard eSignal was working on its generic broker support, but I don't know how complete the features are going to be. The current generic broker plugin seems too preliminary and not enough to be used in a serious ATS. That is the reason I am shopping around for a good bridge between esignal and TWS.


- Clearpicks

 

In TradeStation, you can right click on any chart, and
you see which strategies are aplied to that chart, and
you can turn on & off all of them clicking status button,
all it takes is three clicks

 

You can use TradeBullet to send order from eSignal with simple text files -no need to code with a dll.

See a sample here

Francis

 

tradebullet is filled with flaws. Try hooking up Esignal to Automaven. Its a new version of trademaven. excellent product

 

What flaws?

Francis

 

Dynaorder works fine with Tradestation in my experience, probably with Esig as well. I don't like the commission payment model of tradebolt. Tradebolt may be easier to implement but I found Dynaorder to be far from difficult to use anyhow.

 

I found out that EasyLanguage can fire off VB scripts by posting here before (new to TS 8, no docs on this at the moment; So if you're willing to "port" to VB (to get your buttons), check out the attachment ("tsvb.jpg") from this thread:

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showt...hlight=easylanguage visual basic&pagenumber=2

Here's a preview:

If (cond1)
then ExecuteScript("C:\vbtest.vbs", "MyVBSSub");

This new VB "hook" was enough to clinch my move to TS. There are only a few on this forum that use VB with EL, as I found out, however.

 

Thanks for all the replies. I just found hyperorder might be what I am looking for. Is there anybody having any experience on this product, especially using it to connect eSignal EFS and TWS?


- Clearpicks