Tradestation Users - Newbie Question

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by smili, Dec 20, 2010.

  1. smili

    smili


    Intradaybill, thanks so much for the links. I have books on the way Do you also use similar position sizing strategy in your longer-term accts (if you have them)? I've never heard much about position sizing outside of trading forums. The most I've seen is get about 15-20 stocks spread across industries in fairly equal amts to gain benefit of diversification to reduce market risk It's not talked about much by Buffett, Lynch, Fisher, Greenblatt or other stock guys I read.
     
    #11     Dec 21, 2010
  2. bstay

    bstay

    you can write to TradeStation on those questions (email is free) and you get expert advise rather than merry-go-round on forums. what i think is you should have a working profitable "method" of trading first, at least you know it's profitable when you traded manually, then you look to automate your strategies. heck, you can even pay someone to write codes in EasyLanguage. check out the free tutorials for EasyLanguage at http://markplex.com/tutorials.php . you can use their services or you can choose to spend months/years writing your own scripts. but the tutorials should give you idea what TradeStation can do. within the TradeStation customer forum area, there are links to other 3rd-party consultants too.

    P.S.: have you taken into account 9:30amEST gaps on stocks during intraday? moving averages like 10ma or 10ema don't work right off market open due to gaps and only catches up couple hours later. have you manually traded this idea to see that it makes money?
     
    #12     Dec 21, 2010
  3. smili

    smili

    eod is all I've worked with up to this point. I've never traded intraday

    thanks for the info.
     
    #13     Dec 22, 2010
  4. bstay

    bstay

    as intradaybill said earlier in the thread, learn to walk before asking how to fly. i'm unsubscribed now, here's picture of intraday gap with the 10ma and 10ema. you see these gaps much too often everyday.
     
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    #14     Dec 22, 2010
  5. I started as an intraday futures trader with no solid concept of risk and money management. I was very lucky in the beginning and I built a cushion that helped me when the bad times arrived. I decided to shift to position trading because I realized I cannot fight MMs and automated robots. I still trade some intraday and I risk no more than 0.25% of bankroll on each trade. Positions are sized at 1% maximum. Under some extraordinary circumstances I go up to 2%. Managing risk is second most important aspect of trading. The first is coming up with an edge. Note that the two are related.
     
    #15     Dec 22, 2010
  6. smili

    smili

    I'm sure there's a ton I'll have to learn to work around as I move to looking at intraday data. I am a learner though, and my work has taught me that solid well-thought "process" saves me from 95% of the things that can go wrong. To this degree automation appeals to me, but like you say - I gotta learn the correct processes to automate before I get to that point. The gaps like you show are some of the things I want to do some studies around.
     
    #16     Dec 22, 2010
  7. smili

    smili

    Followup. just wanted to thank everybody who gave me suggestions to check out.

    I went ahead and got Amibroker to start building out some strategies. I'm still learning the amibroker AFL language, but I like the program so far. I got the Intro to Amibroker book by Howard Bandy which has been a very good reference/guide up to this point.

    I'm currently using eod data to learn the programming and backtesting, but may purchase some intraday data once I'm more comfortable with the programming.

    Ultimately plan to migrate to IB using the Amibroker API to interface when the time is right for realtime - either that or purchase some realtime feeds.

    thanks again for all replies and suggestions. It helped me check out lots of good alternatives.
     
    #17     Jan 3, 2011
  8. Excellent choice at a reasonable price. I also plan to migrate all my strategies to Amibroker. AFL is powerful and flexible. There are also a few user groups you can get good help from.
     
    #18     Jan 4, 2011
  9. I have a problem with text_delete in easy language.
    I need to update a text so I check for its existence, then delete it by text_delete and finally write the new text by text_new.
    The problem is text_delete fails sometimes and from that point on all text disappears.

    Any thoughts?
     
    #19     Aug 3, 2011