Matlab in trading field

[victor_li]

Hi everyone,

Could anyone explain to me why Matlab is frequently used by a trader instead of other software? What makes Matlab so special comparing to other software in trading field?

Thanks!

 

[A Dashing Blade]

It's not " frequently used by a trader" at all
It's occaisionally used by quants who don't have any in-house analytics

 

[victor_li]

It's not " frequently used by a trader" at all
It's occaisionally used by quants who don't have any in-house analytics

Thanks. Then why do those quants use Matlab instead of other software like VBA,maple?

 

[Martinghoul]

Matlab is good for scientific computing. In particular, it excels at vector/matrix alegbra. Given a need for fast matrix manipulation in finance (and other sciences), Matlab naturally fits the bill.

 

[rhw]

Professional quants fairly often come from a math/physics background and will have met matlab in their undergraduate courses. R is also becoming widely used, as I understand it, because of its natural connection to stats. It is however a general purpose language as well.

 

[Hakuna Matata]

R is also open source, whereas MATLAB comes with a fee for the basic package, plus any add ons that you might want to use.

It's brill though.

 

[rhw]

As well, for a lot of purposes, you can use Octave (also open source) instead of matlab, however there are some things octave doesn't do as easily, or the same way as matlab.

I personally use R with R-Studio. On another forum I found a workable way to connect Metatrader 4 v500+ and R-3.0.1. which I am now doing under Ubuntu 12.10/wine

[Edit - wrong R version]

[Edit - if interested google 'MT4R' for the MT4 <-> R connection mentioned above. It's the first result a.t.m.]

 

[Hakuna Matata]

knew there was an open source MATLAB-type product but clean forgot the name.

 

[Timmus]

Besides Octave there is also SciLab, another free Matlab clone.
I'm not sure if it is any good for trading though?

Regards,

Tim.