So is it then practical to leave a system unattended for periods of hours or days? Is there enough possible outs to ensure that all contingencies can be dealt with so that your human intervention is kept to a minimum? This is what Im grappling with. I envision organising myself so that Im hands off except in the case of system breakdown at some point in the chain at which point my contingency kicks in, alerts me, and I deal with the problem. Is this viable/doable?
Ok heres a little gift that might help some folks out.... http://www.ilandinternet.com/PS_Managed_Server_Network_Device_Monitoring.aspx Cheap peace of mind IMHO
I'd imagine it would vary by broker, but any disconnect by the client side isn't going to cancel orders automatically. It's really going to boil down to the API and its' functionality by broker. The best systems are going to have the ability to "cancel all" as a trader directive, not a broker directive. That functionality is going to be base on just getting a massive amount of orders out of the ECN or exchange where there is a problem. Any hard and fast rule as to just canceling in a client disconnect isn't going to help anyone; it's more of a matter of keeping the potential problems to a minimum. I think you also need a broker that has the ability to do all of that for you via the phone as well, and quickly, if it is trader side issue. Internet disconnects are really an ISP issue, something the broker has no control over.
Right, of course the phones are always the best way to handle something like this. I was thinking as some sort of last resort. Say, the NAP in dallas gets blown up, I'm lounging around on a beach somewhere.. or otherwise no way of calling, connecting, otherwise. I guess in reality it basically would never happen but these days, who knows.
Norm, Good question. I have run my systems unattended, and in some cases during overseas travels. I have only done so after learning the weaknesses in my system - not the strategy itself, which has been very thoroughly backtested, but all links in the chain - electric power, internet connectivity, data spikes. I gravitated towards automated systems in the first place not necessarily to leave them unattended, but rather to rigorously codify my methodology to the point of eliminating my own "judgement" and manual execution, neither of which I trust as much as a statistically sound, mechanical/automated approach. Best of luck with your endeavors. Thunderous
automated trading is a great way to go - but never leave it unattended. you can be doing other things, but you have tohave the computer in your vicinity (unless you are just trading for the thrill)
How much did that set you back? Right now, I have been babysitting my system and have cheapo ups that will provide about 10 mins. for my system. Enough time for me to exit trades and shutdown. But, I'm considering spending some $$$ to give me more power/time and have the ability to run multiple systems. Any recommendations on brands or products? Stick to APC?
I thought I'd mention how I am autotrading...I run Neoticker on a dedicated pc at home. The pc and modem has an uninterupptable power supply so if there is local power loss the pc/modem won't go down - local telephone has diesel generator backups so being in rural Iowa has so far not been a problem. Also, since I work full time I remotely access my trading pc via loginme.com and I can monitor and check how the system is doing. occasionally, something happens where a trade is missed, and I am not sure why but it seems to correlate with me running some other program on the pc remotely while Neoticker is running...so I have stopped doing that. All in all, it has worked out very nicely, if I am traveling on business I can remotely start up everything as long as I have some sort of internet access. Nice thing about logmein.com is you can even reboot your pc remotely (with the paid versus free version of the software).
I have been using Automated Trading through CoolTrade for almost a year now. The trader automatically turns itself on at the beginning of the day and shuts itself off. It syncs itself up with IB which is great because I dont have to worry about waking up before the market opens. I havent had any problems. I made my strategy (only changed it a little bit from the one that it came with) and the automated trader doesn't make any radical moves. It waits for the market conditions to meet my criteria before entering into a trade. It trades stocks that I have never even heard of before. Its actually very comforting because I was able to test my strategy with real time data before using real money. There isn't any backtesting or anything like that. So for those of you that dont feel comfortable leaving your automated traders alone, you should check this out. I like the website (www.cool-trade.com ) because I can check it from anywhere. I just log in and it tells me how much my automated trader is up or down and it also shows you all the trades that you made for the day. Shana Shrader
Hi, I've been developing trading strategies since five years. Since I am not able to sit 24 hours a day at my PC my only chance was to dedicate LOT's of efforts in creating an automated trading environment in a co-located server (indeed, the only way for example for automated Forex trading - 24 hours a day). Result: have developed 75% percent of the trading infrastructure necessary by myself (Trading strategy backtesting engine with script language, by far the biggest task - Tickdata collector/warehouse - Maintenance of Server remotely from anywhere in the world by a secure Website - Failsave execution engine -> final objective: FIX connectivity. Now working through the whole stuff for years I had some good ideas I'd like to realize in the near future. Indeed, the final aim will be that one designs his strategy on a normal PC as in a classical Backtesting engine like Tradestation, Metastock, configure graphically the fail-save attibutes (e.g. what to do in which events - templates furnished) and compile the whole stuff into several Windows Services, which are able to run completely unattended and can easily be monitored. I'd like to stress that fail-save is largely a question of definition what to do in which failure case (broker connection down, internet connection down, temporary power off) and not of programming, since modern Servers in a colocation environment have very neglectable downtimes, but remote connections can fail. So if one has developed the right scenario for all these issues, all other users can profit from that analysis. I'd like to offer a complete package (classical Backtesting software on PC, compile the whole strategy with one click, deploy it on a dedicated server in a datacenter (packaged offer) and run it either by yourself or alternatively in a managed service agreement with first quality Server administration (in short a very simple environment in which Traders which are nonprofessionals will be able to reach similar execution quality like the big investment banks). Could such a solution be of interest for anyone of you AUTOMATED TRADERS? Thanks for replies