Automated, unattended Trading

Quote from David Cohn:

Chinook,

I appreciate your reply. I agree that I need to have some redundancy in case of failures. Has it been your experience that IB frequently disconnects or cancels stops or cancels buy/sell orders? My trading strategy is not the kind that would generate lots of rapid fire stops or buy/sells - I am not trading second by second or minute by minute, but more day by day.

Thanks for your help,

Dave
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Dave,

IB is usually fine. But about 3-4 weeks ago, I had couple of disconnects/day for 2-3 days. Also couple of times, I remember seeing IB broadcasting messages for some stops being cancelled (not mine). Anyway, these problems are kind of rare but you need to account for them.

Chinook
 
Quote from David Cohn:

I have a relatively simply trading strategy that I need to completely automate to run unattended. The strategy consists of buying 10 predetermined stocks near Monday close, setting negative, positive trigger and trailing stops, and then continuously monitoring the price to sell if a stop is encountered. The negative and positive stops can change on a daily basis - they are not calculated but are predefined - taken from a table. For those stocks that make it through the week without encountering a stop, they are sold near Monday close, and the next set of 10 stocks is then purchased and the process repeats.

I need to go to automated trading because my work hours and Internet environment prohibit me from accessing IB or any other sophisticated broker that sends real-time signals during trading hours.

I am new to automated trading, and am attempting to write an Excel-Visual Basic program using IB's TWS API's to automate this trading strategy. While I am a fairly experienced programmer, I am running into problems with Excel and VB and am seeking out off-the-shelf software. There is so much software out there that it is hard to know what to get, and what really works. It appears that some of the automated trading software is far more sophisticated than what I need. My trading strategy may evolve over time to become more sophisticated, but at this time appears to be quite simple versus what some of these software programs tout. I need software that allows me to quickly construct this simple trading strategy, that is very reliable in executing this strategy and running unattended during the day.

Any recommendations and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave
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It should be possible to implement this type of strategy using TWS by itself.

ie I determine that i want to be long the stock if it goes above $10.50, the night before I enter a STOP order to buy at 10.50, and two conditional orders, a stop loss at say $9.99 and a limit sell at $11.50 in an OCA group. The sell orders are active only after the entry order is filled. Each night I can update my orders from there.
 
Hungry4Knowledg,

Thanks for the comment. I am interested in exploring this further. Do you know who these firms are that would trade a strategy for me on their behalf using a locked or encrypted TradeStation strategy?

Thanks,

Dave
 
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