A lot of people have discussed the reliability of Excel ActiveX, VB, DDE, etc. Let me say again, if you are making a lot of trades and need lightning fast execution, Excel is probably not for you. But if you trading less frequently, such as a few trades a day, I see no problem with Excel. I've been using it (Excel, with DDE and VB code) without problems for two years.
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Automated trading through Excel
- Thread starter TheStudent
- Start date
Quote from scJohn:
I am using the Excel trade sheet that comes with Trade Magic using IB as the broker and the data feed. BY going through the trace logs one can see that TM (Trade Magic) is handling the event being posted by IB/s API. For some reason the corresponding events in Excel VBA do not get fired 100% of the time. With an automated system, having Excel VBA fire the events 99.99% of the time just does not cut it.
Ok, I think I see what needs to be done to be flawless. Trade Magic is some kind of compiled executable, and it gets the job done. I'm confident that a VB executable will solve the problem. Anyone who can put together an automated program in VBA/Excel has the skilz to make it a compiled executable. Were up to .Net now, but I think a used 6.0 version (ebay) of the Development Environment would work for these purposes.
For trading purposes (ie. interfacing with IB API), I am not fathoming how any kind of C language (pointers etc.) or java can outperform VB.
How do you like Trade Magic? How magical is it?
JohnnyK
no one who is good or worth anything will code anything for free and I would not accept such a 'gift'...
If you have money to trade, pay for someone's time and effort. Do not be a slouch and a moocher...
Having said this...I have had an arrangement with a talented programmer in Hollad via rentacoder to do some excel work in exchange for a system and source code already mine. I still paid a nominal amount. The problem is with free work is that you are quite limited and you can only ask for very simple work. An automated system written from scratch would be far too much of an effort to smooch off someone. If you contact me I can suggest some resources on rentacoder who are very experienced in financial engineering and quite reasonable.
I have written specs and "managed" projects like that for people before and trust me it is far better and cleaner than asking favors on ET...
If you have money to trade, pay for someone's time and effort. Do not be a slouch and a moocher...
Having said this...I have had an arrangement with a talented programmer in Hollad via rentacoder to do some excel work in exchange for a system and source code already mine. I still paid a nominal amount. The problem is with free work is that you are quite limited and you can only ask for very simple work. An automated system written from scratch would be far too much of an effort to smooch off someone. If you contact me I can suggest some resources on rentacoder who are very experienced in financial engineering and quite reasonable.
I have written specs and "managed" projects like that for people before and trust me it is far better and cleaner than asking favors on ET...
Quote from winter:
Unless you are super-secret with your trading methodology you may want to consider just asking around here at ET. I've noticed there are no lack of programmers here and I'm sure some would probably be willing to code your system for free with the understanding that they could use it to trade themselves as well. In that sort of arrangement I would imagine you could get as much tweaking done as you want since it would benefit both players to improve the system.
Learning to programming is not trivial and if you don't have an desire to learn it is not something I would recommend. Just my 2 cents...
Its interesting that you incorrectly assumed that such an arrangement would be considered a "gift" and that the person needing the coding would be a "moocher". The arrangement that I outlined (that you quoted) would be a mutually beneficial arrangement, the coder would gain access to a (presumably) profitable system and the trader gets the system automated at no cost.Quote from andrasnm:
no one who is good or worth anything will code anything for free and I would not accept such a 'gift'...
If you have money to trade, pay for someone's time and effort. Do not be a slouch and a moocher...
While I agree that coding an automated system completely from scratch could be quite intensive (or not depending on many factors about the type of system) there are also folks here who already have a framework in-place and coding the changes to implement a specific system may not require much work at all.
In any case, since both parties would be in agreement going in I dont see how it could be considered "mooching".
As someone who used to earn a living coding C++ and is now working on developing automated trading systems on the side I can only agree with myself.Quote from francis1:
As someone who earns a living coding trading automation software I can only agree with andrasnm.
Forget about the slouch and smooch part, just read the rest of the post and he's right on target.
While I would like to forget the the negative attitude that was pervasive throughout andrasnm's post its hard to do it since it pretty much is the entire post.
Since you earn a living coding I understand that what I was suggesting would not interest you but I am quite confident that there are folks that frequent here that would be interested. The costs involved with getting a system professionally coded represent a pretty high hurdle for most folks here, certainly for someone who is considering using Excel as an alternative. Clearly there are pros and cons to each approach but I don't think its a stupid idea at all.
the negative aspect is assuming that the "system" is worth so much as the coding time and effort of a person who might have a family, hobbies and a life. There are many free systems around and some are far better than some black box systems offered for thousands. In my practice I make a point on emphasizing that the money anyone paid me is for the ongoing support and for my time in testing and value added services. There is a huge BS "cloud" in assuming that a person's time and money is equal with some rules that he might or might not have the testicle to follow anyway.
PS I just made a $100 for 5 minutes of work to re-code TS 8 to TS2000i
I however will support the owner for quite some time in case there is some error or more work needed.
PS I just made a $100 for 5 minutes of work to re-code TS 8 to TS2000i
I however will support the owner for quite some time in case there is some error or more work needed.
some of the worlds largest investment houses and banks use excel to code develop test and auto trade billions of dollars.
I installed an autotrade system on a 1.5 billion dollar hedge fund the other day . And guess what they used excel and VB .
I haven't read the full post but excel is widely used in the professional investment community. Its not the best tool in the world for this sort of thing but hey it works.
All the traders had access to Bloomberg and Reuters so their DDE links plugged into excel thats why a lot of people still use it .
Hope this answers your question.
I installed an autotrade system on a 1.5 billion dollar hedge fund the other day . And guess what they used excel and VB .
I haven't read the full post but excel is widely used in the professional investment community. Its not the best tool in the world for this sort of thing but hey it works.
All the traders had access to Bloomberg and Reuters so their DDE links plugged into excel thats why a lot of people still use it .
Hope this answers your question.