I would add a new product 'Rightedge' to the list. I am not affiliated with the company, but have been using the beta and so far looks like it has lots of potential. Like the other platforms listed it supports trading system development and backtesting. I was a heavy user of Wealth-lab, but found it to be somewhat limiting in certain areas. The pro's of wealth lab are that they have a large user community, with numerous trading strategies already coded in there scripting language. I've taken many of these scripts modified them to my own needs. The big con to Wealth-lab is that if your a US citizen you are required to use Fidelity as your broker to use the software (plus they put trading limits on users to maintain the license, so you must trade 120+ times a year at 8 dolalrs a trade... not so good). I also would add that the wealth-lab script is a bit confusing to me, and doesn't make for the most readable code. Rightedge apparently integrates well with IB, so I am in the process of converting some scripts to there platform. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a more mature product has, but all of the core stuff is there in the beta! The fact that it is a open platform is a big plus. It looks like it could be a trustworthy application for automating some of my trades. That brings me to OpenQuant. I would love to hear others opinions on this software? At this point I would like to take a look at there platform and see what the pro/cons are but lack the time. Is anyone actually using it to submit orders to there broker (particularly IB)?
Maxpi, Yes, I agree that it's not easy to set up TS for backtesting at the tick level but it can be done. I've been using TS for this and for auto-trading since May and I'm satisfied with the results. I paid someone a few hundred $ to code a synthetic tick bar program in EL for me. I use 5-10 frequencies for each instrument simultaneously and haven't had any synchronization issues thus far. BlueLou
TradingBlox is solid. It's probably the closest platform you can get, to a "professional 'custom'" platform. (I'm talking about the Builder, not the other versions) The framework is written in C++ coded by Curtis Faith, an original Turtle, who knows more than enough about systematic trading and all the pitfalls on trading and testing. I don't use it currently due to having a custom tester... I'm not writing this trying to spam anyone or affiliated to TB. But it's worth every cent. Next in line would be TS. It's what I learned and used first, and I initially based my own custom app. to do what TS did. (I'm a bit biased towards TS for nostalgic point of view)
NinjaTrader is what I'm using for manual trading currently. It is great, ordering from the DOM is very nicely implemented, writing an indicator in C# takes about a week to master if you program in any other language, the charts are nice enough to look at.. they have a few bugs to fix though.
I would recommend TradersStudio. I use it every day for running my hedge fund, because it is extremely robust. The developer is one of the best; his systems are highly ranked on futures truth. (He is not just a businessman, but a trader) The best thing about this software is that it is 1/5th of the price. I have trade all the other platforms and none of them had the features I need to be able to run my hedge fund.
Ami Brokers and Ninja Trader combined in the best mix that we have found. Ninja has worked very hard to fix the bugs in their new version 6.0 and that is great to see. You may want to look at Neoticker as a third option and some tick precise tool that make it quite powerful for ATS programs. Trade Station does not compare to the three above for any power or trader who uses ticks to build the bars. How can a platform be seriuos if you need the one Min bar to close. tested is also a joke and gives faverable fills that will not happen in live trading. Ninja is open enough with C ## so you can basically creat anything you want is you have the right programmer. I asked for a bid.ask tick template (net delta) and it took about 1 week to get that done and covers my bid ask delta needs.
I used Nija but found that it would not allow me to place trades off the open. I emailed the developers and they said they might put it in.
Yeah, I really wanted to use Nija Trader to automate my systems. Now it is a race between TradersStudio and Nija Trader. (Traders Studio should be able to auto trade soon and Nija trader may have the new feature soon)
Nice thread with nice inputs, bradypreston. What is the conclusion? Which products did you find suitable?