doubletop11

May I ask how you know TS has a large institutional base? I only know 3 institutional people. I uses CQG, 1 Ninjatrader, 1 TS? The programmer institutional guy is the one on high-end platform using C# for the automation system. He has seem my program in action and tells me not to port it or share it to TS. But all 3 tell me that this automation system needs at least 3 years of profitable trading before a hedge or institutional will buy it from me. In that period of time, I could be my own Hedge. My broker says they support both NT and TS. but to port my automated strat. to TS so they can host it 1 hop from the exchange for me. Speed isn't that important to my strategy. but having it on a dedicated server sounds good. So I'm really wondering if TS is all that. I just haven't been impressed at all. maybe it's my computer/connection.

I heard MC also uses easy language too. However, I personally don't believe in high frequency trading. Another question does it plugin well to external files(dlls) for indicator/reference? Can you protect your software from reverse engineering if you decide to distribute it. Both NT and TS handle this in completely different ways. I"m developing software that actually has processing on the server side and the client just draws stuff. Or at least that's how I like to do it. I've had some issues plugin that in. So I've had to resort to some pretty heavy encryption and server sided turn off and on switch. Then there's the SSL that I'm also working with. I just really like the idea of doing as much server side processing as possible.

There's a software out there that does it automatically for you. It's called APA zones. I use it and it works really well.

I'm glad that you are having a different experience then me. Maybe it's more programming limitations and personal experience however I would like to keep this thread really about the ideas of automation vs manual. Have you developed/programmed your own strategy?

Sam's videos are good for beginners. Solid basics and common sense. I wish the Fed had that much. I also wish every trader should/would watch Sam's videos. As I have traded, I have found a whole other realm of supply and demand zones. It's like 2nd generation supply and demand. It's really crazy and a little creepy how zones work out sometimes. IE:FreeStockCharts.com - Web's Best Streaming Realtime Stock Charts - Free I've also really learned a lot about these zones from consult-fx.com and another trader by the name of Phil Newton! He's awesome too.

Being a developer for both Ninjatrader and Tradestation. I would say from a manual stand point it depends on what program you were sold when you first started trading. Easy to use, simplicity, and features. Datafeed redundancy I would say Ninjatrader. I feel like Tradestation is a little more stable but not much. Tradestation is such a heavy system it stores about 10 - 15 times more data on your system then Ninjatrader. Tradestation costs are very high as well for platform usually around $400 a month for data/platform if you at least trade 15 times a month. Tradestation's commissions are at least $1.50-$2 more compared to Ninjatrader's broker network. Last but not least, Easylanguage is so limited and non-innovative I'm kinda surprised that they have any developers. Or maybe that's why they have to give away 30K+ a year to host developers contests. Tradestation has been around a lot longer which gives it more a seniority and does an amazing job of marketing, most support issues, and trade management. Those crazy Tradestation ads pop-up everywhere I go net. Oh wait, I'm a trader. Right now the Tradestation sim account servers have HUGE issues that I won't even go into. Back to the subject of automation. I've been told that putting programmed limited orders and OCO orders into Tradestation is rough and buggy. However, I have personally not done that one yet. So I will have to wait and see. I know that Tradestation will NOT let you draw a normal shaded rectangles on your screen and it can not programmatically access volume or sub-minute drawn objects. So it has really made my projects more difficult.

This thread is jacked with Snake oil. Even if you can call bottoms really really well. We all still get stopped out even if you can around with tiny stops. Here's a student of mine in London running around with 2-4 tick stops on the TF. You can run with stops that small but you will get hit a few times before you grab the top or bottom of a big move and we get slippage a lot! Even when we do nail an entry on the tick. Trading is not about perfection or having a perfect trade. I don't think it exist. But I've only been trading for 2 years. (TF trade picture) Here's on of my many trades from yesterday: (nq trade) No matter what, you gotta know what the heck you are doing! Don't give me this junk of small dom pictures and circles around wicks, That's BS! The markets will eat you up and spit you out. Another thing. Don't start your trading career on the ES it's a trap! Learn how to trade on a market that doesn't have 12.5 dollar ticks. Try the NQ first or micro markets. Sorry for the rant!

From what I have read on the free amazon preview it seems to talk about how to really look at a strategy or trading system from an empirical standpoint. I totally agree with that in concept! In my trading endeavors, I have made a semi-automated system that I believe doesn't rely on faith, magic numbers, expert interpretation, or lagging indicators with divergence or only correct after the fact. Rather it calculates and draw these zones the same way every single time. The interesting thing is that as I continue down this road of pure automation I'm wondering if this is a good book that will shed light into good theory of markets for current day market dynamics and how automation should look at the last 10 years of the new "electronic trading era" that we are in or if it still generalizes the topic so much that it's ambitious enough to always be correct. IE: psychic telling you general stuff that could be true of anyone. I noted that it said it looked at 25 years of buy/sells in the S&P. That's all well and good but if the underlying conditions of the marketplace have changed, "electronic trading era", would not half whatever ideas it assumes at the beginning of that time be inconsistent with what we are really seeing on the charts. Frankly, while the S&P/ ES is major market. I personally think that its dynamics are shewed from the norm of almost every other market globally. I don't wish to get on my soapbox about the dangers and traps of the ES. I have not read the book and would like to know a little more before I buy it off amazon, please enlighten me. sincerely thank you!

The ideas that have been brought up so far are very intriguing. Being a trader that looks as much as the big levels as the small. I would like to get your view of what this book says on how human nature in the marketplace and the natural laws of supply and demand?

Well, I've put a lot of work into this system now. And with the market falling right now like it is. I'm making BANK. You can download the indicator and my pre-define workspaces/templates and a bunch of "how to trade zones" videos at apazones.com

I personally hold positions for hours sometime days. Scalping is what I think of when they say floor traders. Back in the day floor traders could buy and sell the spread and had a great time doing it. They provided liquidity to the market by doing this scalping. However, with the markets now on computers and traders sitting around the world. To buy and sell good spreads just aren't there as they once were. Watch the movie "Floored" on google. Several couldn't make the change to computer trading because they were scalpers with no spreads in the computer world. Just a thought.

[quote=daVinciLite;124372 I wonder how many good traders know enough programming to put their subconscious rules into a set of programmable rules? That's a good question. I have attempted to something like that. I asked 10 of my good trading buddies to go over my rules for my automation system with my semi-automated software. I thought the rules were really easy to understand in the English list I had created. Needless to say, several of them where wondering what planet I came from. So I rewrote the rules in better english. Then I had my friends trade this system for me or look for the setups at least to make sure they were seeing what I was seeing then write down the results. We are still in that phase to some degree however now that we have changed the rules together I believe that this system is even stronger. So the automation of the system is that much more fine tuned. I'm not sure that's the best way to do it. but I know that when I have tried my own rules and programming before in the past my system was pretty terrible! Just my two thoughts.

are u sure they are incorrect for that day in the past?

I have been developing an automated system in the past 6 months. Reasons: I only get a couple good trade signals in a 24 hour period of time. Even though my R/R is crazy to watch just one market for that one signal that may happen at 3am is even more crazy. It's physically impossible to watch the markets and do the calculations that you have to do for the rules of this system. I have to watch multiple markets to make it really rack out every cent. The system started out very simple. basic ideas of just identifying supply and demand. Then it got complicated as I found out how to reduce my risk and let the market tell me how much risk to take. It's all about that it seems now. Then I found a way to make my profit targets dynamic too. So they almost always get hit. It's now has it's own life and lives down in the basement. Actually no, I don't have a basement, but I'm about to put it on a server 1 HOP from the CME. If you prove it to one person they want in and tell someone else then another. then everyone starts asking questions and wanting in. So then I made a dumbed down version to help others without given away the whole thing and just started handing to the public. Now we will see how that goes. I figured I could have multi-streams of income. We'll see! Now I need to train everyone. So I like the automating the system its cool and we will see how this other public version does as well. I'm giving it a year.

Can't say that I can do that for you but I do know of one that automatically identifies Supply and Demand for you in Ninjatrader. It's called APA Zones. I would check out their website to see if that's what you are looking for.

Dealing with Tradestation you product has to go through a lot of compliance testing before you can post on there. As well as when you become a developer with them. Apparently, not many get their application through on the first time. Once the several compliance tests, are done on your system and it passes, bug free, virus free, and solid like a wet noddle! :rofl: You post your encrypted code that has calls to your account inside of the tradestation server for when someone authenticates with Tradestation. The TradeStation Strategy Network: https://strategynetwork.tradestation.com/StrategyNetworkStore/Default.aspx simply host your system up there for people to try then buy.

I LOVE this style of trading. It is simply the best style. Al Brooks does ES price action videos to help you learn. I to had a ton of indicators on my screen. Blew out a small account. Then found this Pure Price Action approach. This all happened about a year ago. Then I found a theory about something called Zones. Dynamic S/R that are on key timeframes. 4 hour charts, 60 min charts, 30, 15min.... These zones work based on your rules of pure price action. Yet they give you market memory! So I did a ton of looking around and I didn't find anything that identified these zones for you so you spend all your time when you are not trading drawing zones, and lining up good entries for the next day from the confluence of these zones. Nice thing about this is you only get a couple of good entries a day so I'm not trading and paying nearly as much in commissions anymore. . The other wierd thing about these zones are they line up with a lot of key fib point, as well as pivots. I'll be trading with someone and I tell them I will buy here or there, and they will tell me ohh that's right ontop of a 50% retrace, and a R1 level. There's some really cool other features too. But I don't want to spoil it for you. Being the techie that I am, I was able to actually recall some of my C++ programming; learn the new ideas in C#; and program out these zones. So now I trade pure price action with these zones. I call it Advanced Price Action (APA zones). My suggestion would be continue to hang out with these people! you might also try a 5 min. chart. Here's what my charts look like now. These zones change color with how many times price has retested them. Aqua = fresh, 1 bounce = blue, 2 bounces = yellow, 3 bounce =purple, 4 or more =grey. I want to take the first retest of zones because that's usually the strongest. Even if that first retest is a few day after that zone was drawn. Can be a day high/low.

Actually this is one of the features that Tradestation does an amazing job at for it's developers, of course I'm still in mid-development. From the contract I signed with them they actually take care of all the administration for the subscription that you get to your software/automated system. They send me 100% of the subscription fees that they collect from the subscribers. I do however have to pay a nominal fee to Tradestation for the platform and to use their developer strategy network system. There is some datafeeds provided. The only free datafeed is a forex. Everything else is delayed data. There seem to be somethings I like about Tradestation, yet many other things that I just ask myself "why". Tradestation has one of the most complex platforms I've seen. Yet they are able to charge the a good amount per month for their system. But it all varies on what you want.

yeah, I have it posted on my website for my users. The reason that I'm porting to tradestation first is I should have about 15-20k traders on that platform that use my system everyday, but manually. So that's why I need to port so bad. $100 subscription/month * 15,000 = $$$

Yeah, I'm working in TS right now too. Making my NinjaTrader system into a Tradestation system. I'm on with both platforms as a developer. It's not easy though, at least with the functionality that I have in Ninjatrader is extremely complex in duplicate in tradestation. But still grinding away. Thank God that we can use external DLLs in TS.

I wish you the best of luck parliament718 as you start this process. I hope and wish that you don't have as many headaches doing everything as I did with my program.

Yes, NinjaTrader gives sub-second level tick data it's part of my system that I have built.

I myself am a ninjatrader developer as well. APA Zones is my product. Ninjatrader is what you are really looking for based on your post. Data: I would go with a free AMP futures trading account for 30 days. To get your data. Plus, you can grab 10 years of back data from kinetic. Backtesting and Database: Under tools options you can have control of all your data for backtest as well as something ninjatrader calls: Market Replay. This is usually in simming/ backtesting your system. Ninjatrader has to connect to each of these features through server like connects by going to File > connect > "real datafeed", "back data" Kinetic, or market replay. Programming in ninjatrader: basically, ninjatrader gives you a namespace: indicator to program your system in their software. To create a strategy you have the namespace of : strategy to use. *note: you indicator/strat. and all other indicators that you have must compile in the their given code editor for your indicator to work on your charts. It's annoying sometimes. You can also take your code out of ninjatrader to visual studio if you want to debug or program in there. Ninjatrader however add it's own self generating code to the bottom of all your code. If you plan to distribute your system through ninjatrader, contact support directly and they have a person that will help you lock down your code and provide you with a vendor license. Once you are in programming in their editor. you can do a " this." to see all the functions and methods that you can use. "F1" is also very good on showing you examples of their methods. You can link up external dlls to your indicator as well. So that gives you the power to use C# or C++ libraries. Note: Chartcontrol commands can really execute orders. Ninjatrader forums are also another great resource. Once you get your code in ninjatrader, you will find that porting it to other platforms to be pretty easy in concept and most work will be done for you; that's where I am right now. Please look me up if you need help.

No Trade, Price dropped out of the zones before this level. Entry @ this point would break rules.

now I'm looking to short @ 844.50 on the TF