I've already studied the hell out of investing over the past few years or so (40-50 books and thousands of articles).
I'm now studying trading/day trading/swing trading. I've been studying them enough for the past few months, so much so that I'd like to test it out on a simulator.
The problem is, for some reason, I'm intimidated by trading software and what not. I just know there are going to be 3,000 different "DMGA: 2DGOMcA%^7" choices on the screen and in the program itself that I won't understand what the fuck they mean or do.
What do?
Also, can you set trading software/brokerage trading software to do automated things? Like "Buy all stocks that are doing X, sell when they get to Y, and set a stop loss of Z on all of them"?
t. scared faggot
>>1169697
Gooby bump.
Bumpy.
>>1169697
You will find what you're looking for in NinjaTrader, it has a professional C# scripting/programming environment where you can implement whatever you want as long as you have the skill to write it in code. They also have a strategy-wizard which allows you to do the same with a point&click-interface which is for people who have no clue about C# but obviously this wizard is limited. Other than that it is just about as good/complex as TradeStation for example.
The way their pricing works: the platform is for free with end-of-day data and originally designed as a powerful charting software. But they also implement a wide range of brokers such that you can connect to your broker and then trade through NinjaTrader directly. These trades are then combined with commission/fees for NinjaTrader (see website for more info on pricing). You can play around with the end-of-day data as much as you like and you're free to use whatever the software offers (C# scripting, backtesting, etc.). You can also create a demo account at FXCM (which is what I did) to receive live intraday-push data for CFDs and forex for free, and then subsequently develop your intraday scripting/algorithms for free based on that data.I have checked out quite a few platforms over the years but NinjaTrader so far was the best, and it gives you full access to algo-development and up to tick/1sec-intraday-push data (CFD, forex) for free, so you can play around with that until you feel confident to start paying real money for another data-feed if you need to. MetaTrader, TradeStation, NinjaTrader and InteractiveBrokers APIs are actually one of the few ways to implement algo-trading at all as far as I know (not every broker support automation).
>>1169697
>>1170091
One thing that is really invaluable for backtesting is having minute-intraday data for the past x days to proper backtest your algorithms. After I selected the FXCM demo data-feed I discovered that they allow you to download 1-minute data for every day starting from Jan01, 2013 ... I downloaded 890 days of 1-minute data through NinjaTrader and wrote a R-script to go through each day and test the intraday performance of algos I am working on, you can 2 of the smaller R scripts I have written for that it in the picture. Of course the actual implementation of anything in NinjaTrader goes through C# (not R or Python)
>>1170158
don't they do stocks as well if you for example connect your live interactive brokers account to them? should be possible but I am not certain. Otherwise write your own algo and implement it via Java/C#/C++ through the Interactive Broker API directly into IB TraderWorkStation (TWS), they have a python and R library as well out there but officially supported is only the Java API as far as I know (NinjaTrader makes use of that API when you connect the accounts)
>>1170158
other than that, if you already have good knowledge of C# then coding in NinjaTrader should really be super easy as:
scope(C#) > scope(NinjaTraderC#Tools)
Oh, also, my first question still stands: How bad is the complexity and esoteric nature of trading software? Which company/broker offers the least complex software? (Even though, in theory, this would remove many features that many people want.)
Are there some that let you customize it to where if you only want the price, bid/ask, volume, chart, and moving average displayed, you can have that?
>>1170293
Bump for this.
>>1170293
One more bump. Can you customize trading software in terms of what tools, features, stats, ratios, etc. are shown?
>>1169697
Go on the broker's website and watch the training videos, following along with a paper account. I'm using interactive brokers, and I've been watching a bunch of their webinars.
>>1170164
Have you done algo trading with IB? I've been meaning to start but my life's been busy, so I don't know how it works
>not using Sterling Trader Pro
its like you faggots don't know how to trade.
>>1172434
>Sterling Trader Pro
>Pro
sounds like you have to pay for it senpai
