Hi, I would like to start trading using Mechanical trend following method. I have been long exposed to the methodology and have a working grasp of the method and its requirements. Can anyone recommend what brokers and platforms to use to start implement a mechanical trend following system? Based on my research Ninja Trader and Tradestation seems to be the biggest two, with automated traders leaning toward Tradestation. would love if someone can weigh in on the debate, or add any new suggestion to the mix. Lastly, I am planning to start off in the Spot FX and futures market, does anyone know how much capital should one have to start trading various futures markets?
Even though its not perfect I would suggest NinjaTrader because you're less tied to a specific broker. NT v8 is currently being developed and v7 is in maintenance mode. If you enjoy coding in Easy Language (really? vs C#? heh) then you may want to check into MultiCharts for broker independence. Regarding brokers, I would suggest MB Trading for Forex and Optimus Futures for futures. You can sign up for MB Trading forex demo without any credit card or funded account requirement. The general suggestions for newbs is to start out with ~$1k and trade forex micro-lots just to test that your strategy is profitable. The profits won't be large but your focus shouldn't be on profits, focus on whether the strategies are winners. If you're like most people, you'll be ready to trade with serious money in ~3 years or so. ;-)
Tradestation works fine if you don't mind having the individual chart for each instrument open all the time. Your algo will be run within the chart so if you're TF'ing several futures you'll have a lot of charts open. It's not bad for cpu and memory usage, though. They also have portfolio maestro as an option if you want to back test your strats over several different instruments and find what risk management rules to use on the entire portfolio. The walk forward optimizer is pretty easy to use and gives a little insight.