I use IB's Trader WorkStation as my trading platform. I get market data from IB fed into QuoteTracker for Technical Analysis and Charting. All I need....works great.
I use Neoticker - and automate my systems to trade through MBT brokerage. So far I have been very pleased with the combination. I still have to monitor trades during the day because the server sometimes gets disconnected from Neoticker...Neoticker can be a little difficult to program if you want to use scripting instead of their formula langauge.
Ninja trader 6.5 ( beta) just came out and it introduced some nice features that are new. It now has some tools super position like Neoticker and orders can done with time and not on bar close so some spread trades can now be programed. They added some range bars and also have a renko chart ( posted example) that can now be used on the full basket of indicators. Trade well.
Please see the following links; they have discussed most of the above products: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=104393 http://elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=108534
I'm a current TradeStation user but in the middle of switching to OpenQuant. I use TS to run a fully-automated algorithim-driven trading program. I've done most of the serious programming in C++. TS cannot handle multiple tick frequencies in the same strategy without substantial EL programming. It takes over 1 hour to run a single backtest through 1 year of data in EL with my current program. Also, the TradeManager often does not record trades properly and the ReportManager has a magical ability to represent the past better than the actual trading record. I would recommend TS only for the hobbyist or for those who think they see patterns in charts. I would not recommend TS for someone looking to apply anything resembling scientific method to trading. I recently received seed capital to form a fund based on my algs and I'm working feverishly to recode this in C# so I don't look like that jerk in the ESignal commercial. -BlueLou
Hope the re-writing worded well... Should have tried MultiCharts before migrating to other platform. Multicharts can handle multi-fractals in the same chart. The backtesting/Optimization utilizes multicore CPU, it runs fast. Could have saved you a lot of time in re-writing your code to C#.
Tums, Wow! That post was 9 months old, but thx for the reply. Anyway, I moved on to NinjaTrader. It's okay. Not good for backtesting w/large amts of tick data but it's a stable platform. The next step for me is going to a broker's API. All of my code is custom so these platforms are more of a limiting factor at this point. -Lou
Am currently using tws from ibkr and a charting package from someone else. Works fine for everything except trying to whip around to different stocks in the first half hour. Way too many clicks necessary to get an order done in the split second that you have during that time frame. Need a setup where the level two, chart, and order entry are all linked, so you can find a stock and get stuff done fast.
With Ninja you can trade off of the chart but Level II data is not available on the same chart - just bid/ask
BlueLou, You said you were switching to OpenQuant but then ended up using Ninja. Why? what was wrong with OQ? I am a TS user that trades multiple fully automated strategies from RadarScreen using the order entry macros on 1000 symbols. Unfortunately TS is just not stable enough. I have issues every week. OQ looked good to me but I don't see much evidence that a lot of people are using it. Their forum is pretty dead.