I have been working on an Automated trading platform for several years. My idea of automated trading is to enforce discipline & strategy constraints.
Some of the pit falls I have encountered in any strategy are:
1. Very complicated system
2. One strategy NEVER fits all market time frames let alone other commodities
3. Quick configuration for market adaptability
In order to overcome these situations, I came up with my own application that talks to my platform / Data Provider API (In my case it is TradeStation).
I capture OHLC date from various time frames and based on certain long term / short term market direction & a few user configuration apply relevant strategy to the market.
The strategies applied are fairly simple & the design behind the system is so other strategies can be plugged in fairly easily & all parameters are customizable from user interface.
I also have other tweaks I manage from the application like receiving SMS when a trade is placed or closed, saving various time frame data, emergency cut off, manual overrides.......
I have been using this system in live market Day Trading trading Crude Oil for well over 6 months and have been tweaking various ideas. I'm pleased with the outcome so far & also eager to find other members with similar concepts implemented within their trading strategy.
Here are some screen shots from my application that is hosted as a service with an user interface. The service provides 2-way communication with my platform provider.
Main Landing page that display's current market condition & Automated strategies that were applied & also gives me an option to override some manually.
Definition on trading strategy that should be used based on time of the day
Definition of the strategies based on Long & short time frames as well as pivot points from various bar types to identify gaps/choppyness.
Detail Logs on activity at the end of every bar
Tabular visualization of OHLC data from various time frames just to ascertain the quality of data