How to automate a trading system?

[rooster1]

I am a new trader although I have paper traded a couple of promising systems over the last 12 months.This is my first post and I'm looking for some advice.

I have been paper trading an end-of-day system which uses moving averages and stochastic signals in two time frames to generate signals. I currently have a Capital Spreads dummy account and I screen the FTSE 100 shares after work. Screening takes up to 45 minutes but by the time I have my selected stocks, the market has closed for these instruments.

What I need is a way to automate the screening process, ideally if I could do this at or around 4.15, I could get my trades on before close of trading business at 4.30. The system requires my trades to be placed before the markets open the following day so time is of the essence plus by automating this I could presumably screen a much larger basket of stocks/markets.

All ideas gratefully received.

 

[rnicoll]

My immediate thought is to point you at IG Index. They have the best charting package I've seen in any spread bet firm (CMC Markets have the same, but I'm not so fond of their trading platform, and there's persistent rumours of problems with their datafeed). It's not the full heavy duty stuff you'll get with a for-money charting tool, but it might let you enter enough in code to get it working.

Downside is, IG Index don't have trial accounts. Although you could open an account, test out the charting tool, see if it works.

Failing that, your best bet is probably NinjaTrader and NinjaScript, which is basically C#, so it's a full programming language. If you need a coder, I'd imagine someone around here will have more free time than I do. Problem with NinjaTrader is that you'll need a datafeed, and if you want it to auto-trade for you then you'll have to pay for NinjaTrader itself too.

 

[rooster1]

Thanks

Thanks for your help. I'll check out IG index.

 

[wildkactus]

also have a look at amibroker, you can program in your own system, plus back test it.

AmiBroker - Technical Analysis Software. Charting, Backtesting, Scanning of stocks, futures, mutual funds, forex (currencies). Alerts. Free quotes.

Also if you are using and EOD system why do you need to place your trades before the close of the day, or is this part of your system.
I trade EOD and place my trades in the afterhours for the next days trading. this also give me more time to look over my trades.

 

[rooster1]

Thanks alot, I'll check out the AmiBroker site.

I was worried that if I placed trades out of hours, quite often the market opens and moves quickly in either direction for the first few minutes of the new session - I was worried abut slippage but maybe I'm being naive?? If you expect to get a fill at the close price of the previous day are you likely to get that on the open the following morning if you put your trades on out-of-hours???

 

[Bowball]

i have just started using ninjatrader and think its an awesome piece of kit. you need to be computer literate but you dont need to be able to programme in c as the system does that for you

 

[TigerTrader]

futures betting offer a service where you can automate a strategy and then, combining NinajaTrader, have their platform enter the trades for you if thats what your looking for?