Interested in ATS

X

x2012

Hi,

First off, let me just say that this forum has some extremely good resources and a very interesting read. I came across this forum not even a few hours ago and have been reading thru a lot of the posts on automated trading. I was originally searching for Trading and Psychology but am I glad I found this forum too!

Quick background: Relatively new to stocks (just over a year). Have some programming experience, so i know what i can and cant realistically program. Have a strong mathematics background too.

After reading a lot of the posts here, i've developed a sense of pros and cons for automated trading systems. However, there's a few things that I still do not completely understand and was hoping you guys here could clarify.

1) Can home-made automated systems be in a pure programming language like C/C++, java etc or....?

2) The main thing I dont understand is:

a)where do you get the data from to feed to the ATS?
b)What kind of data is available? Quotes? News feeds? Price data etc...
c)What are the restrictions(if any) to the kind of data individual traders can access?
d) How much does it cost?

3) Are there any good guides available on automation? I've already seen a few books on amazon, but some of them seem to only talk about tradestation and its easy language.

While I plan on starting off with something simpler like using Excel, I think it would be great to know the kind of options I have available. I do realise that developing a good system can take years... :)

TIA
 
I am pretty sure that you can use pure programming languages with TradeStation. I don't know the details but apparently you can plug in DLLs or something like that.

Check it out and if you find anything handy, please report back.

Chabah
 
Forgot to add

I already have a system envisioned. I can pretty much trade without much emotion, so it shouldn't be too hard to translate it to a computer.

thanks Chabah, I'll check it out in detail.
 
Quote from x2012:

1) Can home-made automated systems be in a pure programming language like C/C++, java etc or....?
More...
Yes, of course. Check out MBTrading's SDK or IB's API

2) The main thing I dont understand is:

a)where do you get the data from to feed to the ATS?
b)What kind of data is available? Quotes? News feeds? Price data etc...
c)What are the restrictions(if any) to the kind of data individual traders can access?
d) How much does it cost?
More...
The data feed is typically provided by the broker that provides the API or you can go with an independent feed like eSignal. The type of data available varies with the provider. I dont understand the restriction question, are you asking about re-distributing the data or what limits there are on how many symbols you can stream quotes for at once?

Usng the MBT SDK or IB API (via the client) is free.
 
Quote from GTS:

or what limits there are on how many symbols you can stream quotes for at once?

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Yep, thats what i meant. Any restriction on that from the data provider themselves? I assume it will depend on the provider...
 
Quote from x2012:

Yep, thats what i meant. Any restriction on that from the data provider themselves? I assume it will depend on the provider...
More...
Yes, exactly.

Example: http://sdk.mbtrading.com/SDKKB.php

Is there a limit to the number of symbols for which I can request quotes?
You can advise (subscribe to) up to 100 symbols.
More...
 
Quote from x2012:

are there any good guides available to get started and learn some basics?
More...

basics of what? MB trading SDK have some examples with it + help file.
same for IB API. + IB DDE excel file example. good enough to start :D
look for yahoo groups. TWSAPI group have all kind examples from very very basic
 
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