Hello Everybody, Finals are over! I'm going to have about a month free so I'll be working on my big programming project: building a complete set of software used for swing trading. I've been coding trading softwares for years, so as far as programming is concerned, I know what I'm doing. But I'd like to get some input from the board, as a good many of you are swing traders. If the software works, I'd be happy to share it with all of you for free. What kind of indicators do you find most useful? Truely useful? (and don't give me just MA... tell me what kind of MA, crossover, histogram/line, do you like to see). Any kind of indicators you'd like to use, but has never been able to find? (put/call ratio on individual stocks, etc...) Perhaps a rating system of somekind? Interface design. What is, in your mind, the cleanest, most efficient way to organize a trading/analytical software for real world trading software. Don't worry about the technical difficulties. If you have an idea, a thought, etc, let me know. I'll see if I can put it in. Thanks! JS
Are you building this like a scanner? I'm just asking because it seems that what most swing traders need is a way to scan groups of stocks for those that match certain technical setups.
I'm not sure exactly what to build it yet. I can do a scanner without a problem, or in some other form. That's why I need all the experience swing traders out there to tell me what they would like to use to trade with. Is that the type of program that swing traders find most useful? If so, how would you like the scanner to work? What parameters would you like to define, etc...
You might check out www.mrswing.com He's just developed software to scan for setups. You might get some ideas from his work. I haven't used it. A good scan function would be looking for stocks x% from their previous days' high/low since most succesful swing traders use these resistance points as entries and exits. Or an alert when a stock in your basket penetrates its previous H/L.
You might also check out Amibroker - it also does scans, backtesting and the like for swing trading. I've found it to be fast and easy-to-use. It also has vbscript capability for those who want to do a little of their own coding. As far as wishes: I would like very easy handling of sectors and groups of stocks with indictors/backtesting.
I'd settle for a VBA script that would allow me to import the trades from my IB monthly report into Excel and match them up to produce a profit and loss statement Quite frankly TC2000 does almost everything I need to scan for the swing-trade setups I like. I particularly like the fact that I am able to update intraday and run my scans. The fact that it's delayed data doesn't bother me much. But it really helps me position myself before the close.
Amibroker provides a URLGet function that easily pulls the source html for a given web address. I'm too poor to afford an expensive screening service, so I've used it to automatically parse out the financial information in Yahoo's profiles on a 1000+ tickers so that I can pull current ratios, debt/equity, cash, etc. that I'm interested in screening on. It's a bit of work and you have to know VBA, but it would be one way to get your acct info. If you want more info, lemme know...
Okay. Here's the main question I still have before I can start coding: what kind of interface do you find most efficient? Or have been thinking about, but never can find? The reason for this is, interface is a very important of any program, and especially trading softwares where visualization is everything. Most trading softwares use standard run of the mills multi-document forms that aren't must to look like, and at time not very convienent. I'd like to build an interface (and the underlying engines) that would most closely approximate to what we as traders would like to work with.
what kind of interface do you find most efficient An interface to what? Have you decided what your program is going to be? Is it a scanner? A charting package? An execution platform? voodoo