Metastock or Tradestation or...?

[swinger618]

HI,
I would like some opinions on Metastock, tradestation, amibroker, etc, even ninjascript. For the purpose of building, backtesting and optimising automated trading strategies. I have not done any programming before so ease of use is important. I`d like to be able to trade mainly futures, forex, commodities & options. I would also like to be able to have the strategies I build be able to trade automatically in real time. I have an account with IB so it would be good if the software was able to link direct through IB.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken.

 

[PrudentInvestor]

HI,
I would like some opinions on Metastock, tradestation, amibroker, etc, even ninjascript. For the purpose of building, backtesting and optimising automated trading strategies. I have not done any programming before so ease of use is important. I`d like to be able to trade mainly futures, forex, commodities & options. I would also like to be able to have the strategies I build be able to trade automatically in real time. I have an account with IB so it would be good if the software was able to link direct through IB.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks,
Ken.

Given that you have no programming experience, I strongly recommend you to reconsider. You're going to need considerable programming experience before you can jump in with the sharks.

Out of your alternatives, I would probably go for Amibroker. However, as you need to learn programming anyway, why make life miserable: Go with Matlab. The scripting language of Matlab is very intuitive, and, once you learn it, development of new strategies is fast. Matlab programs can connect to IB. I've personally used a direct ActiveX connection and also a DDE link through Excel. Both work without problems.

 

[swinger618]

Thanks for your advice, I'll check out matlab.
Hopefully I can get a trial version.
I got a trial of Amibroker but the programming part dosent seem so straight fwd.
Cheers,
Ken.

 

[swinger618]

Given that you have no programming experience, I strongly recommend you to reconsider. You're going to need considerable programming experience before you can jump in with the sharks.

Out of your alternatives, I would probably go for Amibroker. However, as you need to learn programming anyway, why make life miserable: Go with Matlab. The scripting language of Matlab is very intuitive, and, once you learn it, development of new strategies is fast. Matlab programs can connect to IB. I've personally used a direct ActiveX connection and also a DDE link through Excel. Both work without problems.

I checked out the Matlab web site, it looks pretty exciting, Matlab certainly looks powerful. I couldnt work out what modules I would need from the extensive list, so I've not downloaded a trial, but I'll ring them on monday to find out a bit more. It seems however it may be worth learning this program. From what I saw on thier web site it appears you can actually write standalone programs and applications with Matlab, is that true? So I could create a standalone trading / charting program with it? Any further info or screenshots of yours would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Ken

 

[PrudentInvestor]

I checked out the Matlab web site, it looks pretty exciting, Matlab certainly looks powerful. I couldnt work out what modules I would need from the extensive list, so I've not downloaded a trial, but I'll ring them on monday to find out a bit more. It seems however it may be worth learning this program. From what I saw on thier web site it appears you can actually write standalone programs and applications with Matlab, is that true? So I could create a standalone trading / charting program with it? Any further info or screenshots of yours would be appreciated.
Cheers,
Ken

You do not need any additional modules to trade, just the core Matlab app (which is not cheap). But be warned: Even so, there is significant development work involved before you can even start testing your first system. Stand-alone Matlab apps need the compiler module (be prepared to pay quite a bit more).

As for Amibroker, if I remember right, you need to use external DLL calls for custom systems, which is just fine if you know what you're doing.