Quote from JMowery1987:
http://sdk.mbtrading.com/default.asp
I like that a lot. But will I have level 2 quotes, and charting...
TradeBullet and NinjaTrader both work with MB Trading but how would I develop my systems if I wanted to use Investor/RT???
Also, would I need to create my own charting application or could I implement another charting application's features into my own interface?
So I'd have the broker, and I'd have the ability to send orders with TradeBullet or NinjaTrader, but how I develop my strategies and test them still remains unknown. Also I'd have to set up my own charting system unless I figured out how to use someone else's charts.
Like I said, I have absolutely no experience in network programming so again any help would be useful.
AGAIN... ANY SETUP'S OF YOUR CURRENT TRADING SYSTEMS WOULD BE APPRECIATED!!!!!!!!!
I don't care about your actual startegy, just software that you use, or designed and how it connects to each other and how you get the final product.
If you can take 3 - 5 minutes of your time and explain, it would be very helpful for someone that doesn't have much money and is trying to change his life and do what he loves, I know traders are ruthless, but c'mon.
Not sure why you keep saying MBT doesnt have level 2 quotes, of course they do, look up LEVEL2RECORD in the help file. You dont need experience in network programming to develop an ATS, if you have experience programming DIRECTX then I suspect you are fine. I saw elsewhere you were asking about text files to submit orders, that sounds like an ugly hack and no you dont have to do that. The MBT programming samples show you how its done, not sure why you cant just read those sample programming and understand how they work but as an example I wrote an ATS for futures trading using MBT's API that:
(1) Receives quotes from MBT
(2) Performs analysis
(3) Submits orders and handles the results of the orders
This is all in C++ using Visual Studio (2003?). If you've never dealt with a asychronous programming them the model may take some getting used to, e.g. you dont call a funciton to buy xyz and when the function returns you now own xyz. Instead a message is sent to your program when the trade completes. That means you have to keep track of a lot of things and deal with the unexpected.
My app doesnt have much of an interface, just a few dialogs that I threw together to show me the current trade state and quotes. Most of the meat is logged to a text window which is also saved to a file. If you want to develop a fancy app that looks slick you are going to spending a lot of time that would be be better spent working on developing a profitable edge IMHO.
Another alternative to the straight MBT API is TradeMagic which is a broker-independent interface to developing a trading app. I've had only limited experience with that.
So to answer your question, the only thing you really need is something like a broker interface (MBT's API for example). This will give your application streaming quotes and the ability to place orders. If you want to have graphs then you either need to code that yourself or use another application to provide graphs.
To backtest strategies you can either use something off the shelf or just roll your own. Once you have quote data in files (which you will need to get from somewhere, either a historical quote service or someone like eSignal) its not that big a deal to just code up a simulator and have it - its definitely more work than using someone elses backtesting code but you have the advantage of having complete control over it.
I saw you mentioned AI in a previous post - be careful, it sounds sexy and would seem to be logical but just consider that if it were easy to make money that way every AI researcher in the country would be wealthy. Neural nets are popular now but for most folks I think they are a big waste of time, I know I wasted time dinking with them.
Hope that answers some of your questions
