Trading platform /w Ameritrade

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pacificjo

I'm looking for a trading platform (not a brokerage station like Tradestation, but rather a separate software) that would be compatible with my Ameritrade account. There are so many of them that I don't know which one to consider and which one to avoid.

I want to be able to run strategies built by myself and/or performant strategies with convincing past results provided by the software (montly fees are ok). I also would like auto-trade capabilities.

I only trade listed stocks (Nasdaq, Amex and Nyse).

I currently use Medved Quote Tracker to access my Ameritrade account. The product you would recommend would pretty much replace my Quote tracker and place trades (and auto-trades) on my behalf with Ameritrade.

Please keep in mind that I don't have an unlimited budget... $3,000 softwares or strategies needing $30,000 of capital to be successful won't cut it for me.

I know IB and others are better for active traders. For now, I'm still playing in "junior league" and I would like to stay with my current broker Ameritrade, if at all possible.

I'm a total newbie in matter of trading stations and there is a lot of expertise here, so I'm asking for your help :)

I'm familiar with the concept of strategy trading though, and I only trade that way. I use Amibroker to build swing trading strategies.

What I need is a product that allows me to successfully trade (and auto-trade) INTRADAY.

Any suggestion backed by your own successful experience would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.

pacificjo
 
Quote from pacificjo:

I'm looking for a trading platform (not a brokerage station like Tradestation, but rather a separate software) that would be compatible with my Ameritrade account. There are so many of them that I don't know which one to consider and which one to avoid.

I want to be able to run strategies built by myself and/or performant strategies with convincing past results provided by the software (montly fees are ok). I also would like auto-trade capabilities.

I only trade listed stocks (Nasdaq, Amex and Nyse).

I currently use Medved Quote Tracker to access my Ameritrade account. The product you would recommend would pretty much replace my Quote tracker and place trades (and auto-trades) on my behalf with Ameritrade.

Please keep in mind that I don't have an unlimited budget... $3,000 softwares or strategies needing $30,000 of capital to be successful won't cut it for me.

I know IB and others are better for active traders. For now, I'm still playing in "junior league" and I would like to stay with my current broker Ameritrade, if at all possible.

I'm a total newbie in matter of trading stations and there is a lot of expertise here, so I'm asking for your help :)

I'm familiar with the concept of strategy trading though, and I only trade that way. I use Amibroker to build swing trading strategies.

What I need is a product that allows me to successfully trade (and auto-trade) INTRADAY.

Any suggestion backed by your own successful experience would be very appreciated. Thanks in advance.

pacificjo
More...

jo,

I'd like to help you, but i have no idea what you are saying. You want to integrate ameritrade execution into your/new trading software platform? How do you connect to Ameritrade through Medved? If i understand you correctly, you want to execute with ameritrade but outside of their website/pop-ups/command center platform? If so, i am not aware of such a product for retail. PLease call them and ask and post back.

thanks.

alex
 
Quote from Cluseau:

jo,

I'd like to help you, but i have no idea what you are saying. You want to integrate ameritrade execution into your/new trading software platform? How do you connect to Ameritrade through Medved? If i understand you correctly, you want to execute with ameritrade but outside of their website/pop-ups/command center platform? If so, i am not aware of such a product for retail. PLease call them and ask and post back.

thanks.

alex
More...

Alex,

The product I use right now is called Medved Quote Tracker:
http://www.quotetracker.com/index_nn.asp

On the bottom left of the screen you can see a list of brokers. IB and Ameritrade are amoung them.

They pretty much use dedicated plugins to give you another interface to your brokerage firm's trading screen. Some kind of a 1 stop shop for quotes and trading. The reason why I started using Quote Tracker was its interface with Amibroker, which is my swing trades strategy builder:
http://amibroker.com/

But please don't get confused by my setup. All I'm interested in is YOUR setup, then I will see if it would work for me.
I would like to know if there is an intraday trading software/station that you would recommend after having yourself been successful with it.

jo
 
Seems you should give more details in your style of trading, like #shares per trade, trades per day, how much you're willing to spend/mo. etc, etc.
Why is Tradestation not acceptable to you?
 
Quote from risktaker:

Seems you should give more details in your style of trading, like #shares per trade, trades per day, how much you're willing to spend/mo. etc, etc.
Why is Tradestation not acceptable to you?
More...

Risktaker,

You're probably right: I need to give more info, so here they are.

My trading style:
- I'm a small player with a 12K margin account.
- I live in Canada and I use Ameritrade Canada, so I don't fall under the US based firms "Pattern Day Trader" which requires you to have 25K to trade intraday.
- Trades per day: 1 to 3
- Willing to spend $300 up front or $200 monthly
- Why TradeStation is not acceptable: because they would require me the famous 25K that I don't have :)
- What I'm looking for: a trading-system based platform with intrady strategies that have proven to be successful.

Hope this helps you guys to help me.

jo
 
Quote from pacificjo:

Alex,

The product I use right now is called Medved Quote Tracker:
http://www.quotetracker.com/index_nn.asp

On the bottom left of the screen you can see a list of brokers. IB and Ameritrade are amoung them.

They pretty much use dedicated plugins to give you another interface to your brokerage firm's trading screen. Some kind of a 1 stop shop for quotes and trading. The reason why I started using Quote Tracker was its interface with Amibroker, which is my swing trades strategy builder:
http://amibroker.com/

But please don't get confused by my setup. All I'm interested in is YOUR setup, then I will see if it would work for me.
I would like to know if there is an intraday trading software/station that you would recommend after having yourself been successful with it.

jo
More...

I have used Esignal in the late 1990's and found the staff and product to be less then palatable, but you'll need to ask someone familiar with their current platform as much has changed at Esignal.
I use Realtick for my charting/software package and run a seperate computer for the different execution platforms i use for my partnered accounts with different executing brokers. it's a pain in the ass and i am consolidating most of the business i do with one firm compatible with RT and able to meet my needs. of course, i'm keeping backups.
I don;t understand why you can't trade at ami and use whatever software they offer...like esignal or medved--both say realtime quotes and integrate?...


alex

your last reply is clear. i don;t know of a strategy based system for you to use up there. perhaps some of our canadian brethren can help.
 
Alex,

Thanks for your feedback.

I can't use Amibroker for intraday trading for one simple reason: Amibroker's data feed is mostly End of Day.

You can download over 10 years of EOD data and backtest your strategies which will be naturaly "swing".

For intraday, you need to "build" your data yourself day after day using very limited sources. I simply refuse to trade a strategy that has less than a year of data to play with for backtesting.

This is why my Amibroker is great for "swing" but won't cut it for day trade (in my opinion).

I need both the right product AND the right strategy. Montly lease of both being ok with me. They need to be performant with good returns and good feedback from active traders here.

jo
 
Hello,

Using eSignal as a data feed you can get upto 120 days of intraday backfill immediatelly. Since AmiBroker saves intraday data in its own local database, over time you can grow your database to include lots more.

Using Quote.com (QCharts) as a data feed for AmiBroker you can get more than one year of backfill into AmiBroker immediatelly.

If you are using Interactive Brokers as RT feed you can get long historical backfills from scmagic.

If you are using Ameritrade with QuoteTracker as RT feed you can import long histories from ASCII files (see below)

Etc, etc... there are really lots of choices out there
http://www.amibroker.com/guide/h_quotes.html

If you need even more you can import intraday data from ASCII file. There are several data providers that will sell you CD-ROM with intraday data in ASCII format that can be easily imported using AmiBroker's ASCII importer.
http://www.amibroker.com/guide/w_impwizard.html

If you want several years of intraday history and RT updates - no problem with that. You can import ASCII data into database that is already fed by eSignal for example.

Best regards,
Tomasz Janeczko
amibroker.com
 
Wow, I'm discovering more features from my favorite strategy builder... this is quite impressive, I have to say.

I think I will try Quote.com with which I have a basic registration for quotes. The CDROM with ASCI intraday data seems an even better option.

How fast is eSignal to update 6,000 stocks? Can eSignal feed 6,000 stock data into Amibroker (5m bars) in less than 5mn? Actually, can any tool do that?

I know my Amibroker and I can tell you that Yahoo Finance can feed Amibroker thru Amiquote at lightning speed: 6,000 stocks in less than 2mn. Problem: these are 20mn delay data.

If 5mn delay at that speed is possible, I'm a taker.

Thanks for the detailed answer Amibroker!

jo
 
eSignal delivers every tick and on actively traded symbols it happens that there are more than 400 trades in first 5 seconds of regular trading hours. Because of that the number of symbols that can stream via say DSL connection is limited by connection bandwidth and eSignal server capacity.
eSignal will update upto 2000 symbols tick by tick in real time (no delay or delay less than 1 second). 2000 real-time symbols is highest subscription in eSignal as far as I know.

This is quite different from data polling where "snapshot" quotes are retrieved at fixed intervals as AmiQuote does. This technique does not deliver tick-by-tick but it is not susceptible to number of ticks per second. It has constant bandwidth requirements per symbol and is able to deliver data for more symbols.
 
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