Any software for private trading?

snovik · Post by **snovik** » Sat Apr 04, 2009 2:50 pm

I am sure there are zillions of tools but want to save time skipping the trial and error process and keep my OS cleaner. What would you recommend? Asset class: global equity and ETF. potentially some options but unlikely at the moment

1. free

2. linkable to free real time quote providers, e.g. google

3. some technical charting

4. notifications tools by email. might sound dumb for private trading but this volatility can wipe out anything.

5. ability to dig news providers (e.g. bloomberg, etc) by specific words. Google has such service but would be nice if it was incorporated.

6. and any other nice features I do not know.

wind · Post by **wind** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 5:52 pm

I think R meets all your needs.

blts · Post by **blts** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 6:03 pm

Did you look at IB TradeWorkstation?

1) Free

2) IB quotes are one of the best you can get without plugging directly into the exchange feed.

2a) They also have historical quotes available.

3) Yes

4) No

5) No

6) Yes

Though 4 & 5 are no, I would still recommend IB b/c, imo, if you do news digging you are better off with your own, even rudimentary piece of software to tweak your alert filters.

PS. Unsolicited 2 cents - in my experience news notifications are always post factum. If you had any exposure to news, by the time you get the message - you will be already baked and served.

dgn2 · Post by **dgn2** » Sun Apr 05, 2009 8:39 pm

I really like NinjaTrader but it is not free once you are trading through it. Depending on how you trade it might be overkill. It is free to try and use if you don't want to automate the trades. I combine NinjaTrader with an eSignal feed and it is fantastic for the price.

snovik · Post by **snovik** » Tue Apr 07, 2009 11:29 pm

any opinons on thinkorswim?

Kutilya · Post by **Kutilya** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 6:15 am

>>I think R meets all your needs.

Wind could you elaborate what packages in R help you do all this.

Path Integral · Post by **Path Integral** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 7:37 am

There are also some open source projects you can find on the eclipse website. Furthermore there are numerous demos on how to pull in a.o. IB feeds.

Furthermore there is marketcetera, which is also open source.

curvefitter · Post by **curvefitter** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 1:43 pm

Thinkorswim is great for real time option analysis, but cannot be automated in any way but DDE -- you'd have to use its internal scanner which is not as extensive as the analytics... and forget automated trading.

R is really the only one i've read can think of that can be easily be expanded to include natural language processing like requested, but if you want to do that in addition to a bunch of other tasks you might want to run multiple instances..

curvefitter · Post by **curvefitter** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 1:48 pm

Kutilya,

http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/NaturalLanguageProcessing.html

the recently released IB bridge for trading

quantmod for accessing free historical data

plus of course all the other gazillion libraries for your analysis

briant57 · Post by **briant57** » Wed Apr 08, 2009 4:09 pm

Snovik,

I have been extremely satisfied with thinkorswim for my personal trading.

I have never had a problem with platform stability or connections, and besides that their trade desk is a phone call away and are very helpful.

They do lack on the automated front with only DDE capabilities, but you didn't mention needing that in your initial post.

The platform is user friendly, order entry for all instruments is on the same tab in the same format. Bracket and OCO orders are available, as well as the ability to save orders for future use.