According to the notification at the top of the page I've been a member of the futures.io (formerly BMT) community for 315 days and haven't yet posted anything. So I thought that I would remedy that by asking a question that has been on my mind for some time.
I've found that I very much enjoy the strategy side of trading, but there are some aspects I find very tedious. Naturally, I'd like to automate what I can.
My question is, when implementing an automated trading strategy, is it safer to code your own framework and handle order management via an API? Or is it just as safe to make use of retail platforms such as MetaTrader and NinjaTrader?
Please let me clarify what I mean by "safe". When I say safe, I am wondering if there are features built into the retail platforms that allow brokers to reverse engineer strategies and/or create additional disadvantages for the trader that wouldn't apply to the API approach.
I'm not looking to spark a debate as to which brokers would or would not take advantage of such practices. I've read some posts on various sites where it has been said that such server side plugins exist to detect automated trading and tip the scales towards the brokers (causing orders to trigger that might not have otherwise been sent, stop hunting, etc). (Of course if it is on the internet it must be true ;)
(I also realize that strategies could potentially be determined by reading the orders without ever needing to see the coded strategy. That risk is the same no matter how you trade, so it doesn't affect the decision of API vs retail platform.)
Similar to many others on this site I have a technical background and have been developing software for two decades. So the trade off of rolling my own versus a retail package is mostly a matter of time spent.
If there are folks here that have seen consistent success using the retail platforms, I would find it to be very encouraging. I would much rather implement in MT4 or NinjaTrader than spend the numerous hours writing/testing my own framework.
If you have positive experience with automated trading and would be willing to share your views either via a response to this thread or a follow up personal message, I would appreciate it greatly!