Quote from amazingIndustry:
With all due respect, you are a moron! You could as well apply for a senior PM type role at one of the top tier hedge funds, you are about as qualified for that than for developing a >mid frequency trading and execution platform. Others have made their careers in this field (studying CS, working in financial services, or having traded for long time to understand market micro structure and execution related intricacies and then worked their ass off for years to either work successfully with programmers or have learned to code themselves (more than your "Teach yourself Java in 24 hours" book) but you are convinced you are as qualified as all of them to compete in this field? Give me a break, you are delusional if that is what you are thinking...
My honest and very sound advice to you is to start profiling mid-range frequency strategies, this is anyway where your edge in pure retail is the largest. Aim to execute a few trades per day at the absolute maximum. Once you have a strategy that looks promising, peruse an off-the shelf solution to start trading it systematically. You sound like you do not even have much experience in properly profiling and testing new strategy ideas. Do you even have properly cleaned/adjusted/filtered bar data (let alone tick data)? Only stupid people start to delve into a new field by attacking the most complex aspects. You should start with the basic and develop a firm grasp at that before you move up the tree. I do not think you get better advice in this thread in my honest opinion.