Coding an Automated System

[Doomberg]

Ok so me and a friend are thinking that one of our strategies would probably work ok if it was coded to work as a fully automated system.
At the moment we trade completely manual with all our set ups but would like to give automated trading a go.

Also if there was a way to alarm us when certain set ups start to appear even that would be good.

Who here does automated trading? And if you wrote it yourself, how did you go about it?

Thanks

 

[the hare]

if you have to ask these kind of questions then you really dont have a chance of making this work. I'll be brutally honest, you probably dont even have the capability to define requirements in such a way that a programmer could assist you.

No doubt you dont believe me, but you'll be proved wrong.

 

[Doomberg]

What, so i can't just draw the typical set up on a napkin over a cup of coffee in a cafe?

 

[BeginnerJoe]

If you think building trading systems is easier than trading, you really have no idea.

There are plenty of cheap programmers on the interweb. Maybe you can ask them to give it a go ? Like a lot of things, you get what you paid for.

To get things done properly, you are looking at 150k+ on labour cost alone per year. Hardware and infrastructure costs go on top. If your strategy is incapable of generating that kind of money, forget it.

If it's that easy, every noob would be running around with a trading system, wouldn't they ? Why don't you follow these excel automatic trading system people are making around here ?

 

[Doomberg]

My post in response to the hare was obviously a joke, and i never said it was easy.. i was simply asking for the options on what would be the next steps on automating a system... and 150k is a ridiculous figure which you just plucked out of the air, it wouldn't need a years labour to make a simple system

 

[BeginnerJoe]

If it's that simple, why don't you do it yourself ? 150k is cheap to get someone who knows what he's doing. With the hyper inflation, I'd want 200k.

 

[Doomberg]

I have no experience in coding and neither does the other person involved, if you don't have anything useful to say other than "Oh its impossible" or "It'll cost 200k" then don't bother.

 

[BeginnerJoe]

Well, I am a professional trading system builder. See if that is useful ?

 

[BeginnerJoe]

Like I said, you can get these cheap programmers on these interweb "pay-per-job" forums. They'd do stuff for peanuts. You can try those for luck if you don't want to spend years learning to build computer systems yourself.

 

[Black Swan]

you've already cornered the market with an automated question system so yeah, why not fill ya boots..btw, your friend isn't Pipsaholic is it? He appears to have similar *talents*..

 

[BeginnerJoe]

What did happen to pipaholic ? I haven't seen him for a while. Maybe he's busy loading up them pips ?

 

[Doomberg]

Well then, in that case maybe you should take 'Beginner' off your name and tell the board who you really are

 

[BeginnerJoe]

I am a beginner trader.

 

[Black Swan]

I have no experience in coding and neither does the other person involved, if you don't have anything useful to say other than "Oh its impossible" or "It'll cost 200k" then don't bother.

open an account with FXCM use their strategy trader wotsit..simple stuff. But look it's all been tried before, nothing, believe me NOTHING you have will be unique. I chuckle when I hear that folk have been too precious re their *system* to send it over to FXCM for fear that someone will do a runner with their strategy..LOL..

The best thing you can do is carve out your amygdala with a spoon, you'll be half way to becoming a psycopath, trading without any emotion..chop off your fingers whilst you're at it and your money management will be sound too, and you can give us all a fookin rest then..

 

[Pazienza]

I am a beginner trader.

...and an experienced sex pest and indecent exposer.

 

[BeginnerJoe]

...and an experienced sex pest and indecent exposer.

Nothing doing in the market again ?

 

[Pazienza]

Nothing doing in the market again ?

WTF Joe, it's only 10:15. I'll take the odd thing before RTH on occasion, but it's 5.15 am in New York and an hour earlier in Chicago.

I might go and have breakfast in a bit though.

 

[BeginnerJoe]

WTF Joe, it's only 10:15. I'll take the odd thing before RTH on occasion, but it's 5.15 am in New York and an hour earlier in Chicago.

I might go and have breakfast in a bit though.

Try forex and learn to build automatic systems. It'd give you more to do than sitting around getting frustrated and start throwing an4l innuendos.

 

[Pazienza]

Try forex and learn to build automatic systems. It'd give you more to do than sitting around getting frustrated and start throwing an4l innuendos.

It wasn't an innuendo Joe, it was either fact or libel.

 

[the hare]

i was simply asking for the options on what would be the next steps on automating a system...

Seriously, the next step should be learning to code.

The coding is the simple part, a chimpanzee could do it. Actually I dont believe its possible to design an automated strategy without being able to code. 10 years ago I used to believe it was as simple as finding someone who knew how to trade, define a set of rules and automate. It isnt, its a completely different game.

One of the big problems is that most of the people who offer programming services are pretty clueless about automated trading. If they knew what they where doing they'd be doing it rather than working for chump change. The only solution is to do it yourself. At a later stage you can bring in specialist help if required.

The only other advice I can give is dont start by learning a trading platform language such as MQL, start off with something simple until you understand the basic building blocks and concepts like variable scope, loops, conditional statements, functions etc. when you are comfortable you can add in the complexities of dealing with a real time data feed.

The reason I say that is that testing an application in real time that is responding to events based on an unknown real time data feed is a lot more complex than you might typically experiece in other types of development projects where you can engineer test cases and get instant feedback. For example, you might want to test that your ma cross to open a buy trade is working, but then the feckin market goes short ! and so the conditions you wanted to test didnt occur, and might not occur again for quite sometime, and when they do, perhaps you discover a bug, and the whole feckin process starts again. It is possible to generate test conditions and use the backteter, but its not something you should be doing unless you are comfortable with the programming language.