Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: My own custom solution
Trading: Emini Futures
Posts: 49,753 since Jun 2009
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Can some of you TOS users clarify for me what exactly Prodigio RTS is?
1. Is it a new version of the TOS platform?
2. Is it backwards compatible with existing TOS studies?
3. Is it only for automation? Not possible to manually trade with it?
4. Is it free for existing TOS customers?
I am trying to learn more about it, and also need to know if Prodigio threads should co-exist in the ThinkOrSwim section on futures.io (formerly BMT) or if they require their own separate subforum.
No. It can best be described as a supplement to the TOS platform. You can use the TOS platform and never touch Prodigio. If you want to use Prodigio, you must first launch it from within the TOS platform. However, once opened, you never have to refer back to the standard TOS platform, and Prodigio users often 'minimize' their standard platform screen. Prodigio has its own fully-functioning interface. Additionally, all your account information including trades is synchronized between Prodigio and the standard TOS platform.
2. Is it backwards compatible with existing TOS studies?
No. Unfortunately, at present, it is incompatible with the standard TOS platform library of studies. Instead, it contains its own library of studies which can be used. Currently, I do not believe it has the same variety of studies available as the standard TOS platform but it does have a decent selection.
Of course, you can build your own studies without knowing how to code which is one of its primary attributes. On the other hand, some might say that once you have figured out how to use their nodes and flow diagram methods properly, you might as well have learned how to code I don't want to bash it, however. It's an interesting product that shows promise.
3. Is it only for automation? Not possible to manually trade with it?
You can trade manually with it. It has a feature that allows you to scan real-time for your entry signals and once it finds them, it simply alerts you, leaving you to manually 'pull the trigger', which you can do inside of the Prodigio interface.
4. Is it free for existing TOS customers?
Yes, it is.
Theoretically, a subforum makes more sense from an organizational standpoint. However, I'm not sure it is warranted yet from the point of view of need. Indeed, the official Prodigio forum is not exactly a hotbed of activity, at least not yet. But Prodigio is young and could well blossom, especially as a vehicle for automated trading for the masses which is where everything is probably headed eventually.
You might hold off on creating what could be an empty subforum until you get a minimum amount of Prodigio related posts and then collect them all when the activity starts to pick up.
Hope that helps.
The following user says Thank You to srgtroy for this post:
I got pretty deep into it for several months about a year ago, and got frustrated when backtests often failed validation...
After chatting with a couple guys on TOS now, they said that it has improved quite a bit. Curious to hear your thoughts, or anyone else for that matter.
Hey Massive, I see all is well for you from recent post
I checked on prodigio a ways back but it didnt impress me, have they gotten it any better? Im back to using tos more than ninja go figure still executing thru ninja for now.> Im gradually switching chart by chart to tos, really I had my pc shut off with live trade on and I'm rethinking having my orders on a server. I might have to hit u up if I have any problems with my MP chart
Decided to run a backtest in Prodigo, a simple RSI oversold entry, and RSI overbought exit, against 550 stocks / ETF's (SP500 + NAZ100 + a few ETF's), for one year (unfortunately the max allowed), daily bars. It took just over an hour! This is server side, if not stated earlier.
How long would such backtest take in MC, approximately?
With Prodigio you can do automated trading of correlated stock pairs. You can write scripts using a visual language that will automatically enter and exit the pairs based on criteria such as when a moving average is reached. I did simulation trading for a while and there is a separate chatroom and a guy who gives a seminar every week discussing the different pairs.
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: My own custom solution
Trading: Emini Futures
Posts: 49,753 since Jun 2009
Thanks: 32,299 given,
97,501
received
I'm currently working on a strategy in MultiCharts, using 2-years of tick data which has produced 1.6 million bars. It generated 95,000 trades and it is much more complex than an RSI OB/OS, and takes about 60 seconds to complete.
For daily bars it would take a split fraction of that time (approximately 700 bars vs 1.6 million).
If you meant optimization vs backtest, then it is hard to compare without knowing exactly how many parameters you were optimizing.
That's one heck of a difference Mike. My 550 stocks / ETF's was actually truncated to 500, an imposed limit, as is 1 year... Number of trades, was like 40 or so, lol. Just a simple test that I had set-up and saved from a year ago.
Glad to hear that MC did all that crunching in about 1 minute. All things considered, now after re-visiting Prodigio a year later, I'll be going with MC, from MCDT. 30 day trial next...
Sticking with TOS also as it just does so much, and so well. Works on a Mac too...
Prodigio BT is slow on large lists currently as you have noted. I only trade a small list of high volume leveraged ETFs so it goes very fast for me. You can also pre-screen your list down to a much smaller size if you use TradeVision first then save the results to a list for the back tester to run. Trade vision can be used to find good daytrades just buy watching it. The new version lets you drop your rules into it so you can see where the conditions are met along with other settings you can quickly change on the fly.
During the day...TradeOptics prints the rule matches within 5sec of a match. The core data rate of the system is 5sec bars. The RTS auto trades happen that fast also. They are a lot faster than I can pull up the chart...look and then manually place and manage the trades. You can do some really fancy rules without any scripting knowledge.
It keeps getting better with each release and is quite usable now. The scripting programs are likely more powerful but certainly not as user friendly when you want to make quick changes or write and test another idea quickly.
Keep an eye on it over the next few months as it looks like they are really moving on the development side.
I have to agree that the backtesting isn't amazingly fast. I does help a lot if you run your backtest at night.
Glad to see some discussion on Prodigio here. I've been working on getting a strategy ready for live trading using it. It looks like it has some great potential, especially for swing trades and investments... I haven't tried to set up any of my day trading on there yet.
There is another place for hints tips and some code for Prodigio but I can't post a link at this time.
Just a heads up for anyone that was curious about Prodigio but was not set up with TOS or TDA to be able to use it. TDA decided to no longer carry Prodigio as of the end of May this year. From what I understand, Prodigio was never owned by TOS or transfered to TDA when TDA purchased TOS. TOS had a contract for usage that apparently is running out at the end of this month.
ProdigioRTS is carrying on the product and it looks like they may roll out a business model similar to Ninja where it would be open to trade through many brokerages. You can get more information at Get Prodigio | Prodigio RTS
I'm not affiliated in any way with the company but have been a user for over 1 1/2 years. The product has been working well over the past few months and I have been trading both live and in papermoney on it for quite a while. I will post more information as it is released. No word yet as to expansion out of equity trading to other markets.
Thanks for the heads up. I recall in the couple of years before the acquisition of TOS by TDA, updates to the TOS platform was slow and performance lackluster in certain areas. The papermoney forex and futures trading was lagging by a few minutes and all I heard about updates in the mail or the support window was Prodigio this or Prodigio that. And the staff seemed to focus on Prodigio webinars and talk about Prodigio instead of fixing minor long standing complaints about the TOS platform.
Now after a couple of years since TDA took over TOS, there's been a great improvement in the TOS platform and continual updates and new features while it's the reverse news on Prodigio i.e. hardly hearing about it now. I tried a few tutorials but never really got into Prodigio and it was obviously a totally separate and different platform. I hope updates on automation via strategies & thinkscript in TOS continues.
From what I understand, TDA wants to put a lot more focus on thinkscript. They have the "thinkscript lounge" in the chat where a lot of people share information (call tech support and ask for it to be turned on in chat). I suspect you will see much greater functionality with thinkscript in the future.
That said...they will have a tough time matching the level of sophistication one gets with Prodigio and the ease of programming complex strategies. Prodigio eliminates the syntax problems and allows multiple time frame studies to be easily implemented.
It only needs a few more things like a way to capture your entry price and time for exit strategies and a way of managing the trade size separate for each strategy being run. Object-oriented programming is very easy to grasp for the person that does not want to learn a scripting language and Prodigio allows a much higher level of complexity than thinkscript does currently.
Important information about your Prodigio RTS platform and orders.
We would like to express our appreciation to you for your continued interest, support, and great assistance in helping shape Prodigio RTS into one of the best trader’s platforms.
We would like to take a moment to update you on changes taking place with Prodigio RTS at TD Ameritrade. We recognize, and are proud to know that many investors and traders like you have come to rely on Prodigio and its unique tools to monitor & scan the markets, spot potential opportunities, and build exciting trading strategies simply and quickly without any need of knowing how to script code. Our objective with Prodigio’s Wizard Lab is the powerful Drag-N-Drop-Point-N-Click technology allowing clients, investors and traders of every experience level to be just that, great traders, without having to become great developers. You can leave that to us…
Thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade will soon be discontinuing all Prodigio client support and education, including direct platform integrated trading & execution services upon the close of business on Thursday, May 31st, 2012. It is important to note that your existing Prodigio RTS orders will no longer be supported by TD Ameritrade. If you have any Prodigio working orders on your TDA or Prodigio rts platform, please take immediate steps to unwind any such working open orders to prepare for the drawdown. TDA would like to remind you that Prodigio rts orders will no longer be available or supported as of Saturday, June 2, 2012.
MPower Trading Systems is pleased to announce effective June 1, 2012, all Prodigio Clients and any new prospective client investor/ trader will be provided FREE direct access and utilization of the entire Prodigio platform in demo (paperTrading mode) via download at Get Prodigio | Prodigio RTS The firm's objective is to provide you and each interested client the very best technology experience available to meet all your analytic and trading requirements. We recognize that so many investors and traders rely on Prodigio RTS and its unique trading tools every day. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you detail today as to when or if "Live" trading execution services with thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade will resume following the May 31st termination date. Please know that the entire Prodigio RTS team is working very hard to establish a new business connection to support thinkorswim and TD Ameritrade Live trading accounts moving forward. Prodigio is expected to become available in the near future to another qualified online broker dealer by September 15, 2012 of this year. We truly apologize for any inconvenience this may be causing you. We appreciate your patience with this change and look forward to the opportunities it will present for bringing you even more features on the Prodigio RTS platform.
Please know that the firm and entire Prodigio team is 100% committed to you and making sure the exciting Prodigio technology remains available to you and every client upon request. Rest assured, Prodigio will continue to be made available to you!
IMPORTANT NOTE-Saving your Wizard Lab strategies and Rules before the upcoming Termination date.
As a Prodigio user, you may have created some great automated strategies or trade signals using Wizard Lab. We encourage users to back up these rules and strategies if they would like to retain them for continued use at a later date. Please note that MPower Trading Systems does NOT store copies of user’s rules or strategies on our servers. This information is on your local file system only, and you are responsible for saving this data if you would like to use it at a later date.
You can back up rules and strategies using the Export feature in the Wizard Lab tab. This creates a file on your local file system that contains the rule or strategy. Keep in mind that exporting a rule will contain the rule itself in addition to all rules nested within the rule. For example, if you have rules A and B, where B contains A inside the rule, when you export rule B the file will contain both rule A and rule B. The same applies for strategies. All strategy files will contain all rules inside them. Note that importing a rule or strategy will always import everything in the file; if a name collision occurs, the secondary rule or strategy will contain an index at the end of the name. In the example above, if you export both rule B and rule A, and import them both, you will have: “rule A", "rule B", and "rule A(1)". We recommend deleting duplicated rules if they are unnecessary.
Use the following steps to export rules or strategies:
Step #1: Launch Prodigio and click on the “WizardLab" tab.
Step #2: Export strategies first. Click on the tab "Step 2 - Strategy Builder".
(a) Click "Open" and select a strategy for export. Press "Ok".
(b) Click "Export" and select a directory to export the ".wiz" file to. We recommend keeping all strategies in a separate folder named "strategies". Click "Save".
(c) Repeat for each strategy you want to back up. All rules used by the strategy are contained in these ".wiz" files, so you don't have to export the rules they use.
Step #3: Export any rules not used by the strategies you've exported. Click on the tab "Step 1 - Rule Builder".
(a) Click "Open" and select a rule for export. Press "Ok".
(b) Click "Export" and to select a directory to export the ".wiz" file to. We recommend keeping all rules in a separate folder named "rules". Click "Save".
(c) Repeat for each rule you want to back up. All nested rules used by each rule are contained in these ".wiz" files, so you don't have to export the nested rules they use. The rules and strategies are now saved on your computer to be imported into Prodigio.
Step #4: When the Prodigio platform is available on May 31st at Get Prodigio | Prodigio RTS, you may then begin to import your Wizard Lab strategies into your Prodigio platform.
(a) To import a strategy, click on the tab "Step 2 - Strategy Builder", press "Import", select the ".wiz" file under the "strategies" folder, and press "Open".
(b) To import a rule, click on the tab "Step 1 - Rule Builder", press "Import", select the ".wiz" file under the "rules" folder, and press "Open".
We appreciate your patience with this change and look forward to the opportunities it will present for bringing you even more features on your Prodigio rts platform.
Again, we truly appreciate your continued interest, support and patience during this migration-conversion period. Please let us know if we can be of any further assistance or answer any questions about our technology or services. Our Support email is support@prodigiorts.com.
Thank you and we wish you continued trading success.
Not really sure myself, they don't seem to want to discuss the issue. But @Sabine's understand seems to jive with this message that TD didn't purchase this technology when they bot TOS.
On May 31, 2012 I recieved an email from Prodigio Support that advised that:
"Thinkorswim by TD Ameritrade will soon be discontinuing all Prodigio client support and education, including direct platform integreted trading and execution services upon the close of business on Thursday, May31st, 2012. It is important to note that your existing Prodigio RTS orders will no longer be supported by TD Ameritrade."
It went on to notify that MPower Trading Systems would provide free direct access and utilization of the platform in demo mode via download at Get Prodigio | Prodigio RTS.
Thought ya'll might like to know.
The following user says Thank You to thinkster for this post:
FYI I was using prodigio with TOS and they no longer support that platform. I came across this website while I was trying to find out what happened to them. I finally got comfortable with platform when all of a sudden they stopped supporting prodigio. I just downloaded the free trial from prodigio's website and I'm using their trade vision tool to find great setups. It really is a great tool .
Options House (OH) has signed an exclusive deal with mPower Trading Systems to bring Prodigio to their fold. The announcement was made on the OH blog 9-10-12.
Details are forthcoming. I would imagine it will take a little time for them to couple the api and test the system before the service goes live.
The demo client listed in the above post still works in paper-trading mode although there are a few bugs with the order management. The heavy lifting of the program development has been done so this should get interesting again when Prodigio goes live again.
The following user says Thank You to Sabine for this post:
Thanks Sabine! I'm excited for whats to come from prodigio's partnership with optionshouse. I've been getting very comfortable with the platform and I've been very successfully with building my own strategies, its pretty easy to do considering you don't have to be a programmer to do it. I received an email form them the other day and their video overview is pretty exciting.
Do you have any back door knowledge on when they will go live? I've contacted both companies but they are not giving out any definite dates.
I'd also like to find out more about this. I found out about Prodigio a few days ago, and it's node based rule design is very intuitive. Still playing with some quirks in the system, but it looks to be perfect for automated trading and strategy testing.
Sadly, it seems it may be dying off. There isn't much recent posts or information on Prodigio.
Hello, I see most of the discussion here is older and wanted to see if there is any new information or thoughts out there on using Prodigio. I am just in the beginning stages of looking for something that could do automatic trading and would like to hear more experienced traders thoughts on this system. Thanks
