If you want to do discretionary trading then the platform will be easy for you to pickup. However if you want to do systems trading then that will depend on whether you want to run systems made by other developers or ones that you want to develop. For the latter or to even tweak systems you will unfortunately have to learn programming. Whether the language is easy to pick up or not depends on you. IMO it is easy to understand but then I knew how to program before...
Thanks Splat I want to put my own ideas into the system. TS's website claims that programing is easy with their system. I've been testing some ideas at Stockfetcher but I want to try some intraday strategies (dont think stockfetcher does that)
Like anything, if you dont know something you just need to sit down and work at it. Easylanguage isnt as difficult as learning a real programming language since you are really only writing enough to hook into the software. Best way is to play with it and start from the basics and build up... If you are technically minded I am sure you could pick it up quickly.
From what I've read so far, I understand that you need to have an account with TradeStation the brokerage to get the 8.3 software. My question is do you have to use their brokerage services? Or similar to 2000i can you then hook it (with some programming) to your own broker's execution api? While maybe leaving some money in the TS account and maybe executing a few trades here and there... to "maintain" the account. Has anyone done or know about this?
ok thanks for the advice Avid I will keep that in mind. but just out of curiousity, technically, is it possible to use TS 8.3 as a software standalone?
Yes TS 8.3 can be used as a stand alone with owndata but it is very expensive to do so as owndata cost about $1000
Last time I read tssuport's info on owndata, you had to have an account with Tradestation to use owndata with TS 8.x All owndata allows you to do is to use exchanges other than in the US. It is not meant to make TS standalone.
TS 8.3 v1419 sucks balls until the next release! This is really getting old with these premature releases.