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I have finally gotten to the point where I can pursue my dream, developing an algorithmic trading business. I have completed my schooling (Business Economics, Business Administration, & Entrepreneurship) and passed a few standard FINRA exams (Series 7 & 63). I have roughly $50,000.00 in real estate that I unfortunately inherited when I was 18 (24 now). I have already spent 5 years preparing myself for the trading industry, and am more than happy to take the time to not cut corners. I have focused my attention on leveraged ETFs and FOREX currencies.
- What is the best programming language to use given my background, work ethic, and $ constraints?
- How many years will it take to successfully develop a complete automated system?
THANKS!!!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I am still in junoir high but going to take running start soon.
1. In my opinion, you should use C++ or C#. Most trading engines / platform like Ninja and Metatrader leverage these two languages to enable users to automate trades or backtesting. If you are coding from scratch, then i think it is whatever language you are most comfortable with.
There are people who only use Excel and VBA in Excel to program their systems, maybe that is a good option for you too.
I don't think you are constraint to $.. lol i wish i have $50k. When i was learning PHP i would spend hours in the school computer lab and hours of time in-front of my laptop. I think you are constrain on times rather than $, coding a working program require tremendous amount of dedications.
2. Once you know how to program well, you can easily develop a decent trading bot in under a week. But, it really depends on the complexity of your trading algorithms. From reading threads in forums, there is this Russian guy who spent years developing his trading platform...
I would suggest just diving in... Install Ninja Trader, build an automated strategy using the wizard, then "unlock" the code and start coding/tweaking. Next download Market Replay data (from NT) or connect to a futures data feed provider demo account (Zen-Fire) and test your strategy using Market Replay or backtest against historical data. Both can give different results for the same strategy.
See the tutorials on NinjaTrader to help get you started.
There are quite a few threads here on the benefits & tradeoffs of MultiCharts vs. NinjaTrader so I won't repeat them here, but my .02 (for what it's worth):
Even if you're a programmer/IT architect by profession (I've been one for 25+ …