Could Metatrader steal data?

What these programs MAY be doing, platforms like quantopian do it openly by inviting people to develop their algos with the promise that they will be kept secret when in fact no one will ever find out in case they use them. No serious trader will put code on a program that calls home because trading is about tail risk and the tail risk in this case is someone stealing your code or even in a simple manner anticipating your orders in case you are profitable. Charting and system development should not mix but must be separated by firewall.
 
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indicator777 said:
What these programs MAY be doing, platforms like quantopian do it openly by inviting people to develop their algos with the promise that they will be kept secret when in fact no one will ever find out in case they use them. No serious trader will put code on a program that calls home because trading is about tail risk and the tail risk in this case is someone stealing your code or even in a simple manner anticipating your orders in case you are profitable. Charting and system development should not mix but must be separated by firewall.
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Exactly. Unlike with traditional industries where it's visible if someone stole your work, with trading it's completely undetectable. I'll rather be paranoid and profitable.
It doesn't even have to mean the company is systematically stealing your work, it could be simply one rogue employee who does it, there's no protection against that.
 
It is true that in general if stuff stays back on server it can get stolen - but in general, most of the stuff is garbage. So for someone to pick out good from the trash is pretty hard. If someone can understand the differences, yes they can steal - but thats not an easy job.

That said that risk does exist; and which is why i am wary of such software.


-gariki
 
userque said:
You don't think the performances (backtests or otherwise) of the stuffs can also possibly be stored on the server? And searched-for by such?
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yes; but its pretty hard to figure out which perf results are good due to chance vs structural advantages (since very few of them exist). Even if they found someone trading well its possible that its hard to emulate or scale or follow - and even if done correctly, the system might just fail going forward - so if someone is trying to steal someone else's idea and is stupid enough to put money behind something like that - market will part them with it sooner than later.

That said, yes; its still a risk - and for that you do have to think about it a couple of times.

-gariki
 
Negative Theta said:
... But, if you really want to be on the safe side, then create your entire algorithm logic in a standalone application and then create a DLL which acts as an interface/bridge between Metatrader and your Java(for example) application.
So basically: your Java algorithm communicate with the DLL(sockets, files, etc) and the DLL transmits the information further to Metatrader application. And the opposite direction also: Metatrader > DLL > Java algo...
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I'm going to say that I think structures along that line is a much better way of structuring things anyway, as I'm currently refactoring to do it it provides your algo code some independence from the broker API. But then, my Java platform got blown out of the water by my upgrading to a new API :banghead: (it was using a much earlier API).

So now I'm refactoring IB's API Demo code with some of my platform code to run as an API Babysitter, sitting between their API and my platform. In future, it should be much easier to survive an API upgrade. :)
 
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