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Can anyone please confirm / contradict whether the following is possible or not with EasyLanguage?
I'm looking for a platform that after being developed, for live trading can be completely run through scripts. Think starting up using a scheduler, querying external input files for input parameters and ETF universe restrictions, use functions, integrate real-time data and custom indicators, create a report, and send it out through email.
I would prefer to run at least the automated trading and tracking parts on a colocated server, VPS, in the cloud, whatever, and would be okay with developing and modifying my strategies on a tablet or laptop instead.
The strategy I'm using and that I want to rebuild and further expand uses a limited ETF universe and has fixed rules. It only has to check whether the rules currently apply or not, and act based on that. As such there would be no benefit in having an power hungry program with all bells and whistles fired up that can only destabilizes the process I'm interested in.
Ideally for live trading I would only need a script on a remote server, start it, go on holiday for a month, and after a month see if it's still going strong. Obviously this is a bit exaggerated but I DO want to set up a system that would make this possible in theory, so that there is NO NEED to "do something" at a screen.
I have discussed several platforms on a different thread but since I use TradeStation as my broker I thought I should do one last check that I'm out of luck with them.
Thanks much for your kind help - highly appreciated!
drftr
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,388
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Not the TS expert, more of a dangerous noob, but never heard of people doing this before. I believe @KevinKday has automated TS stuff with hot key macros though. @ABCTG also is very knowledgeable on easylanguage and TS.
I hope they see a chance to contribute to this. I'm afraid I will be limited to developing Python, C#, C++ scripts that can be scheduled and started from the system command prompt but that would mean reinventing at least 3/4th of the wheel :-(
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,388
Thanks Received: 10,207
Probably 7/8th of the wheel! The nice thing about something like Tradestation is there's a lot of things built in to protect you from yourself, while if you program it all yourself, who knows what you might miss. Not sure why but I misspelt @kevinkdog above. (dog not day)
I have never done something to this degree. It sounds pretty complicated. I know some good programmers, so feel free to PM me. But don't forget, exchange rules say you are not supposed to have algo unsupervised.
Thanks for that. Good info as it's different for other platforms. For instance NinjaTrader allows trades to be altered from an external source. But then again that's a completely different language that makes such a thing much easier. I assume it would be the same for MultiCharts.NET and some others.
Guess I have to withdraw the idea of trying to do so with TradeStation though...
Just to be clear, I never said it couldn't be done. I just said I personally had never done something this complicated.
Tradestation OOEL has some really amazing things it can do.
If you are far down the path with Tradestation already, I would definitely try to find an expert to weigh in. For example, have you asked this at Tradestation forum, where Tradestation employees answer questions? You can also PM me, and I can send you a few names of programmers.
Thanks. I will have a double-check on whether OOEL can be used to create strategies within the application that somehow can be started from outside, maybe through a DLL, API, command prompt, scheduler, whatever.
I haven't even started! This was the last question to be answered related to my platform selection thread:
I'm in the process of selecting a platform for strategy development, backtesting, automated trading, and tracking, but unlike many/most I don't use charting at all, and it feels a bit awkward looking …
After getting used to the idea that what I wanted couldn't be done through a platform I thought I should give it yet one more chance because TradeStation is my broker. That makes it great for free data and for easy automated orders which are quite some bonuses! Plus that it would save a lot of time. So I have posted my question on 2 TS forums (to no avail) and didn't get a response from customer service either. It is then that I decided to also post it on the EasyLanguage forum here.
I confirm that OOEL looks interesting, but... the objects apparently can't be called from outside EasyLanguage, while the objects themselves can "look outside". This means TS has chosen to embrace object orientation to add more versatility to EasyLanguage but also to not open up its capabilities for the outside world. Bummer, as this could have been the perfect mix...
Not to discourage you at all -- I think this is a cool idea and I can strongly appreciate the appeal of letting something run unattended for weeks/months while I can just do other things, knowing it's making me money in the meantime -- but let me say that the idea of letting any kind of program trade money live for me without any monitoring on my part would make me very, very nervous. Actually, not nervous, but afraid.
I'm not talking about the soundness of the trading ideas it would incorporate; they may be great. I'm talking about what happens when, not if, a bug in the code surfaces and it starts trading in an uncontrolled way? I've been involved in a lot of mission-critical projects over the years,, where a business relied on our code day by day, and it always has taken attention to catch and fix problems, usually completely unanticipated and after we thought it was thoroughly tested.
So since the thread is titled "proof of concept double-check," I suggest that the totally unsupervised concept is an iffy one. Obviously, an automated system has to just be allowed to run, but I'm concerned with the idea of letting it run and being able to just go away for a while.
I think I recall that Kevin ( @kevinkdog ) in this thread or your other one, mentioned that CME expects users of automated systems to be responsible for monitoring them. I think there's a good reason for this.
Again, not to be discouraging, just a caution about the totally unsupervised nature of the idea. I may be overstating how unsupervised you expect it to be, but I thought it would be better to raise this caution flag now, rather than later when problems are happening....
And good luck with it, I hope it works out well.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
