Why do you build your own trading system but not using retail trading software?

[Fractals 'R Us]

Maybe it's better to use two available programming environments than build one's own? I'm using one charting service that is flexible and very capable in what it can do for preliminary work. It won't do tick-by-tick backtesting or optimization so I'll have to port to another service when I get to that point.

 

[WD40]

some people like to make money,
some people like to tinker.
YMMV

 

[fareast1001]

Quote from GloriaBrown:

I have these simple comparison and welcome to give any comment:

Build own trading system advantage:
1. you would know exactly everything and every step, no per-define stuff that always happens in retail trading system, so the chance to have some definition wrong to have wrong outcome would be minimum.
2. There are a lot things especially more complicated stuff that retail trading system just not designed to do that, so self made trading system gives the best flexibility and basically can make anything that in your mind really happens.
3. Even though build own trading system is time consuming, actually many times it is faster to build own system because there are so many ways to find out how to do something and there are always many ways to do something with programming language. For easy language, once it is more than simple kind, it is always very hard to find out how to do something and it takes so much time and sometimes finally it is just not even possible with easy language limitation. Easy language is not well defined sometimes and documentary normally is not enough. Q and A becomes the only way for easy language and it is very not effective for big project.
4. Even if your trading program cannot help you to make money, the programming skill that you developed may help you get a good programming job especially high income trading system programming job in places like NYC.

Build own trading system disadvantage:
1. very time consuming
2. require programming language skill
3. Much more thinking involve for everything in building the system.

Using retail system advantage:
1. very fast, just few lines can build a simple strategy
2. graphical stuff, indicators, prices become an unit with day high low close open, reports with all stats...all of these come with the package.
3. more user friendly, no matter the easy language or the whole looking in general.
4. Live trading with some common brokerage api is right there.

Retail system disadvantage:
1. once build anything more than simple strategy, may not be possible with that specific easy language, and very hard to find out how to do something or anything complicated with specific easy language.
2. cost
3. may not support anything not common like option, arbitrage, many special data involve that is much more than simple price and volume.
4. Many things are pre defined and there is no way to tell until you find out something wrong and not what you thought it is. There is no code to find out what's wrong and how the programs define many things.

All of these are just from my brainstorming, and I wait for your comment!

Have you built your own strategy or trading platform?? If not, why don't you just build it now. Don't just post some rubbish posts on the internet.

I'm sure you never build your own trading system because you don't even know how to build simple strategy in retailing software.

 

[GloriaBrown]

Quote from fareast1001:

Have you built your own strategy or trading platform?? If not, why don't you just build it now. Don't just post some rubbish posts on the internet.

I'm sure you never build your own trading system because you don't even know how to build simple strategy in retailing software.

This is your first post, funny.

 

[Humpy]

I don't want to rain on your parade people but for 99% of us it is probably better to eyeball the facts and make intuitive decisions. I have been a long way through testing different EA systems on one particular platform and none of them came close to me putting my money at risk on their advice.

 

[Alex27]

or just use the most popular open source platform out there and reap the benefits of both worlds...

Like ?

I have been looking at Matlab, Sierra Charts and Amibroker as well, what do you think?

The things I have been looking for in a auto trading platform:


SECURITY - Max on execution platform, Backtesting on local machine, VPS server is protected.

BACKTESTING - Fast so we can quickly fine tune, secure so results are not in the cloud.

EXECUTION AND SPEED - Needs to link to decent data like IQ data api and interactive brokers easily and be able to run in the micro seconds and nano seconds for tick level execution.

 

[J_Smith]

I have these simple comparison and welcome to give any comment:

Build own trading system advantage:
1. you would know exactly everything and every step, no per-define stuff that always happens in retail trading system, so the chance to have some definition wrong to have wrong outcome would be minimum.
2. There are a lot things especially more complicated stuff that retail trading system just not designed to do that, so self made trading system gives the best flexibility and basically can make anything that in your mind really happens.
3. Even though build own trading system is time consuming, actually many times it is faster to build own system because there are so many ways to find out how to do something and there are always many ways to do something with programming language. For easy language, once it is more than simple kind, it is always very hard to find out how to do something and it takes so much time and sometimes finally it is just not even possible with easy language limitation. Easy language is not well defined sometimes and documentary normally is not enough. Q and A becomes the only way for easy language and it is very not effective for big project.
4. Even if your trading program cannot help you to make money, the programming skill that you developed may help you get a good programming job especially high income trading system programming job in places like NYC.

Build own trading system disadvantage:
1. very time consuming
2. require programming language skill
3. Much more thinking involve for everything in building the system.

Using retail system advantage:
1. very fast, just few lines can build a simple strategy
2. graphical stuff, indicators, prices become an unit with day high low close open, reports with all stats...all of these come with the package.
3. more user friendly, no matter the easy language or the whole looking in general.
4. Live trading with some common brokerage api is right there.

Retail system disadvantage:
1. once build anything more than simple strategy, may not be possible with that specific easy language, and very hard to find out how to do something or anything complicated with specific easy language.
2. cost
3. may not support anything not common like option, arbitrage, many special data involve that is much more than simple price and volume.
4. Many things are pre defined and there is no way to tell until you find out something wrong and not what you thought it is. There is no code to find out what's wrong and how the programs define many things.

All of these are just from my brainstorming, and I wait for your comment!

No matter what software you use to assist with trading decisions, garbage in will always give garbage out.

Computers are really stupid things, and can only understand Zeros and Ones!

The grey sponge, on the other hand, can only think of one thing at a time, so, why not introduce this fact into your trading setup, instead of listening and following other people, just because they wrote something down!

The only thing I know, is that I really know nothing!

Much more clever people have gone before us, with some of the best minds which will never be seen again, or replicated by any mixture of sand and silicone!

J_S