Programming Your System

[MC]

	Quote:	BlowFish
	Many moons ago I used to work as an IT consultant and whilst I always called the truth as I saw it I got into the habit of using a qualifier. My girlfriend was always telling me off for prefacing everything with 'I suspect...' Old habits die hard I guess.

Great input from you all.

This post was funny BF, I work in a helpdesk/consultant role over the phone but the challenges are much the same as IT really. I often, even before I started watching the market would always throw a slight disclaimer in there to cover myself on calls. In the technology industry you kind of have to since you often have only a partial picture from the customer.

Good thing too, it carries over well to the market since we often have a bias that can be upset by one sideline participant coming in and changing the game for us.

[darthtrader]

	Quote:	BlowFish
	Personally I'd stay away from the obvious charting packages. They really are not robust enough unless you are going to sit and watch which kinda defeats the object. Cheers.

I don't know if you should lump Ninja in there though with the others. Honestly, I think this is exactly why in 5 years Ninja will have blown everything else away. Its really nothing more than a C# compiler, if C# is robust enough for the project then so is ninja if you have the programming knowledge to do it.
Something I would think that could be interesting is to just hire a computer science student to work for you part time. Could probly find some wiz kids who are going for masters in CS on the cheap and who would be enthralled with the project idea.

[mezameo]

	Quote:	darthtrader
	I don't know if you should lump Ninja in there though with the others. Honestly, I think this is exactly why in 5 years Ninja will have blown everything else away. Its really nothing more than a C# compiler, if C# is robust enough for the project then so is ninja if you have the programming knowledge to do it. Something I would think that could be interesting is to just hire a computer science student to work for you part time. Could probly find some wiz kids who are going for masters in CS on the cheap and who would be enthralled with the project idea.

Great idea except the language we take for granted as traders doesn't translate very clearly to a non-trading programmer. A true test of the robustness of ones system is if can pass the einstein test. Can a kid understand it?

[gooni]

Throwing some weight behing NeoTicker, which is miles ahead of most of the retail competition. I think OpenQuant also has a powerful product.

The problem is that without a decent backtesting platform, you will have no idea whether or not your system will actually become profitable in the end. For me, NeoTicker is the only product I saw that has the flexibility to code anything that could possibly come up. Languages of choice would be Delphi or C#.

Send me a PM if you want more info, contacts for programming (skilled traders and programmers, not just programmers!) or more info re: features or anything. Note, I don't have any interest in NeoTicker other than the fact that I use it and would like to see more people reaping the benefits.

[darthtrader]

gooni, I wonder if you could give a run down on how you use neoticker as far as what you do with it that you wouldn't be able to do with other software?
While it seems like there is alot of amazing stuff for it(if Ninja can't copy the custom TICK16 stuff in 7 i'm going to look into Neo just for that) the whole program feels so clunky and spaghetti like to me. My biggest issue from trying the demo is that without a massive rewrite that they might eventually get dusted by Ninja or Openquant if Openquant ever decides to hire some writers to actually document the damn program or Ninja gets a database up to snuff with openquant/neo.

[gooni]

Valid concerns darthtrader. It took me a few months to get 'efficient' with NeoTicker, and now I can test things faster than any other platform. But here's where I find the most benefit:

- The option of true time-driven charting (as opposed to bar-driven), allowing combinations of many different kinds of series on a single chart. Imagine taking signals off a 15-minute chart and managing the trade using a 100-tick chart?

- Creating managed time- or bar- series to support decisions, easily plottable. In fact, and this might be the same as NinjaTrader, a system is just a special form of indicator. Nearly everything is series and can be used by anything to else to make on the fly decisions.

- Superposition plugin, allowing us to create custom series. I haven't used this as much yet, but have some ideas regarding volatility based bar series.

- NeoBreadth indicators (like TICK16, but you can do practically anything really). Anyone who follows breadth in general should look at this alone as a reason to come to NeoTicker.

- Tick Replay, allowing tick-based indicators to be used in system development and while looking at historical data. This is usually things to do with bid/ask analysis that require every tick to be replayed.

- Simulation Server, that can use the disk cache to replay the whole platform (not just a chart). The Simulation Server requires a restart of NeoTicker and the platform pretty much treats it as just another data server (like eSignal, IQFeed etc). I'm sure you can imagine how useful that is. You can even replay trading systems at say 5x speed and get realistic fills from the trade simulator.

- An OLE layer that allows automation of the entire platform.

- Grid Optimizer product for optimisation (haven't used yet, heard very good things).

- Being outside the US and trading many markets, NeoTicker actually handles timezones properly.

- I think it's probably more efficient than NinjaTrader if you want to have 50 charts open, I never got very far with NinjaTrader.

- A proper pattern scan architecture (but I don't use it, no stocks for me!).

Of course, there are some downsides. It is, at the moment, not great for Forex. They are having some stability issues with some of the order managers in the latest build, and the support forum can take over a day to get back to you. Certainly, the 'community' is smaller than NinjaTrader. But NeoTicker do make sure to tell you that their institutional customers far outweigh retail. Take that how you will.

One final caveat - I'd be prepared to switch in an instance if something better came along. Rewriting strategies is not a mammoth task, and I'd rather retain the flexibility of being able to choose at all times. Hence, anything major I do in NeoTicker (ie, beyond prototyping), I do in C#.

[darthtrader]

great rundown, the create custom series stuff sounds really amazing.
In another thread i've mentioned i've been looking for a tick database solution but it really seems stupid to not go with this or open quant.
I guess I'm really going to have to just take the plunge and buy this program. The biggest selling point to me is I've never once read about anyone who has taken the plunge and regretted it. Its always the same story like this...
I know deep down part of my problem with it is that its not using .net's beautifull anti aliased charts like ninja but even there I would imagine there could be a work around. Not to mention thats an extremely irrational reason to not use something.

thanks a bunch

[gooni]

Eh, I prefer how the NT charts look to be honest (now that I've got the colours all the way I like them). All that said, there's a 30 day trial and a monthly lease option. Just be aware that 30 days is the minimum time you will need to 'get' NeoTicker, and that's using it often.