I know what you're saying about developers. I personally worked with an outstanding ETer on automated work. But, check out X_Trader's adl. It's literally what you're asking for; it's building a strategy through bricks and connectors. No coding experience and they have a very good training tutorial that guides your learning. I thought it was very well thought out and intuitive. I personally use cqg, but adl is certainly a selling point for TT.
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Programming for idiots
- Thread starter slug
- Start date
I know what you're saying about developers. I personally worked with an outstanding ETer on automated work. But, check out X_Trader's adl. It's literally what you're asking for; it's building a strategy through bricks and connectors. No coding experience and they have a very good training tutorial that guides your learning. I thought it was very well thought out and intuitive. I personally use cqg, but adl is certainly a selling point for TT.
yeah, I think that is probably a pretty good point. I think some of us are just looking for a hobby. And from what I hear from guys who know what they are doing, it can be a lifelong hobby with no end in site. And the older you get the more attractive that sounds. Because we are already bored with most of the hobbies we got involved with when we were young.Quote from Slave2Market:
The biggest problem most traders face when trying to automate their strategy is that they really don't understand that their strategy cannot be automated. Very few discretionary traders have a system with rock-solid rules. There is almost always a lot of intuition or experience involved that affects the trade decision.
When they get involved with a programmer they soon learn that it can cost a fortune to attempt to accurately capture their subjective rules. A substantial part of most trading strategies can be Gray-boxed where most of the grunt work is done but the final trade decision process is often difficult or impossible to automate.
What you call an impossibility, we call a challenge. We can all just hire a programmer to teach the computer to do the stuff we always do no matter what.
But spending the last days of your life teaching a computer to do the stuff you do only on rare occasions seems like a pleasurable hobby. And every old man needs a hobby.
The point is, it shouldn't be that hard.
In the old days, you had to know something about computers and programming.
Now it should be very simple. Anybody that has an idea should be able to set up a strategy with no more than a basic understanding of how the computer works.
that's why it cracks me up when some kid thinks he has superior intelligence because he can tell a computer what to do. Maybe in 1990, but not in 2013. It doesn't mean much unless you can tell the computer to do something useful. Namely, trade the way I'm trading, and as you say, it isn't that simple, there are almost as many rules as there are times to break them.
but still, it would be an enjoyable hobby to try to teach r2d2 to trade cotton
Quote from WS_MJH:
I know what you're saying about developers. I personally worked with an outstanding ETer on automated work. But, check out X_Trader's adl. It's literally what you're asking for; it's building a strategy through bricks and connectors. No coding experience and they have a very good training tutorial that guides your learning. I thought it was very well thought out and intuitive. I personally use cqg, but adl is certainly a selling point for TT.
Thanks, I will do some research on them in the next couple days. Based on their site, it appears to be what i am looking for.
most ppl assume that programming can be "learned" in evening classes or a few months studying during free time. but i think a better idea is to learn the technology rather than the theory and the nitty-gritty details of programming. my point is, knowing what tools to use, i.e. NT vs interactive broker's API vs matlab/R vs some other latest greatest tech out there. and during the interview process, just run the coder through some standard technical interview questions, plenty on the web.
Quote from gotalpha:
most ppl assume that programming can be "learned" in evening classes or a few months studying during free time. but i think a better idea is to learn the technology rather than the theory and the nitty-gritty details of programming. my point is, knowing what tools to use, i.e. NT vs interactive broker's API vs matlab/R vs some other latest greatest tech out there. and during the interview process, just run the coder through some standard technical interview questions, plenty on the web.
if you learn the technology/tools you will endlessly be learning some new product each year and not know what its doing. Just learn the basics of programming and you're set.
here's how to program...
1) set variables.
a=1
b=3
2) write some functions
add(a,b){ return a+b}
3) do some loops over stuff you do a lot
for(a=0:a<5;a++){ print a}
4) data structures:
you usually only need 2 types...a list or a dictionary (aka, table, hash, map)
5) most important. download libraries off the internet that do everything for you and you just need to wire them together.
Quote from bpcnabe:
Have you looked at EasyLanguage yet? It's used by Tradestation and I believe can be used with Multicharts as well.
Yes, but here is a reality check: The language is pretty irrelevant as Long as you CAN express what you want.
The main Problem is living and working around all the "issues" with the platform. KNOWING when a backtest is wrong, looking waht to look at. THe amount of code we had for NinjaTrader because it is written by People who should work at McDonalds serving burgers is ridiculous.
Dumped it going to something homebrown. Took a LOT of time to get it working, but now we can fix bugs in the data ackquisition (never trust a ninja backtest that you have not manually verified, trade by trade - sometimes it just Forgets whole days when there is a data download issue).
Quote from slug:
Does ninjatrader allow you to backtest as many symbols as you would like or is it limited? Anyone know if it produces reliable results?
You can backtest all you want - no limits that I know of - short of the computing capacity of your machine.
Backtest and optimization both give skewed results in my experience
Quote from luisHK:
Snide apart I do wonder sometimes what programmers with good understanding in those fields make - I actually suspected hedge funds and big investment banks to pay them better than 100usd/hr
It's fairly easy out here to get much cheaper programmers but I wouldn't trust them in trading system delelopment. Yet backtesting through amibroker or a similar software might be easy enough, even for an IT trainee to manage.
Is it ?
I bill by the project - not the hour
Quote from mgabriel01:
You can backtest all you want - no limits that I know of - short of the computing capacity of your machine.
Backtest and optimization both give skewed results in my experience
Plus ninja backtests are SLOW and MEMORY HOGS - nice to see that in NInja 8 (once it is out in the year 3000) they Claim a 10 times (!) Speed gain. Someone must have been taking drus on this Version.
Even faster, though, you are limited to one machine. No grid capabilities. No database Output for results.