If you truly believe you have an excellent system, I would recommend the patience to wait until the time is right for you rather than lease it out. It can be reverse-engineered by those who try hard enough. You can also try to find someone you trust to watch it for a fee or for free. C2 or SR could work but again someone should be monitoring the trades in most cases. Whatever you decide, good luck with your system!
Just a couple of thoughts from a 8 year Tradestation customer. If your working a full time job and running an automated strategy than I'm assuming you leave the strategy running unattended for at least 8 hours. I also automate my strategies and do leave them unattended and for longer then I care to .... 8hrs is WAY too long and frankly you got taught a very inexpensive lesson. At a minimum consider having TS send you an email or text alerting you to filled orders if you know "about" when or where the order should be filled so you can know if theres something wrong. Think of the automation as "Cruise Control" not total control. The other point that may or may not help you is doing away with the limit order of your strategy. I have found that on more then one occasion the limits have too much room for error in TS and if in this live event it caused part of the issue with TS you may want to look at changing to a market order and making some consideration for slippage into your strategy. My last point is that more then once I have looked into switching platforms and found that the TS software for all its faults has been stable ...overall. I use the software for futures only and don't trade too many times during the day and dont "Tax" the computer or the software with rapid fire orders so I may not be well informed enough to give an opinion on how much stress the platform can handle.
In running TS auto-trade strategies, I have seen it execute 99% of the time flawlessly on both limit order exits and stop loss market orders. And then every once in a rare while something random happens (like a double order entered, or stop not executing properly). I have always watched the execution, ready to override if necessary. I think most people have auto-traded with TS will say the same thing. I don't know of any other retail trading programs that are any more reliable than TS. NT has auto-trading capabilities, but it's the new kid on the block. You ask why then bother auto-trading if you have to monitor it? First, by coding the strategy it lets you backtest it with a range of parameters. Second, it takes most (not all) of the emotion out of pulling the trigger and following your system rules. Following the system rules consistently is perhaps the biggest hurdle to trading profitably. Sandy
Thruckload, the bare minimum you require from any automated system is feedback, especially for intraday trading. You need to be able to obtain periodic updates of what is going on, so if "it" hits the fan you can at least call the trade desk and have them exit the position for you. There are far too many issues to handle remotely without any form of feedback or monitoring. Power outage, network outage, system crash/failure/whatever, exchange outage (yes, they do happen - can you hedge your position in this case? Who will do this?), and these are not necessarily platform dependent. They can and do happen on every platform. Chalk this one down to experience, learn from it and move on. You need to manage all sorts of risks. Think about the scenarios and devise appropriate measures. Then decide whether these can be implemented remotely. If another platform makes life easier with respect to some of these risks, then you need to decide whether to move. Usually (though not always) this will require implementing your startegy in some computer language (C++, C#, Python, etc) and connecting to some proprietary API or FIX engine.
Alternatively, you can open an account at one of these brokers who execute systems and let them trade the system for you. Yes, you run the risk that your system might get leaked out if it is really that good and they will probably charge you around $10 round turn in comissions. This is just the cost of business to pay someone for something you cannot do. In this case the extra $5 is to pay them to monitor the system for you because you cannot. Not ideal, but the alternative is to quit your dayjob.
No, I am assuming that monitoring the system live would have prevented large losses and this was just my suggestion which can be ignored or not. I didn't mean to upset you. As far as I am concerned, he has the following options: 1. He can sue Tradestation to make sure they guarantee there will be no more issues between them and the exchange. 2. He can find another broker/platform which guarantees the above. 3. He can pay someone $5 on top of his commissions to monitor the system for him. 4. He can quit his job to monitor his system himself. Based on your reply, I am assuming you have a better answer. What would you suggest he do?
I actually just got the paperwork to open an account so that I could plot some indicators and audible alerts and then I see these complaints from more than one person this week. Hmm, make you think. Do I want to open an account with them? This wouldn't be auto trading. Sorry you folks had this issues. I just realized I am just going to get a quote from someone I trust to code the signals in C++ in Ninja. I was pretty happy with them on order execution and a lot of folks that I have read have made the switch and our happy.
Yeah, actually I do remember ... luckily I was just scalping so I didn't have to sit through that big drop were everyone essentially gave back all their profits and then some. Surdo et.al. are correct Truckload, as muck as an ass-kicker as it is TS is not responsible for this no more than any other brokerage/software combination would be. It sucks, we all know it. You might want to try Smart Quant for your automated trading needs post haste ... and let this one roll off your back and keep going ... in the scheme of your trading, it sounds like this is just a speed bump. Sincere GL