I'm a Software Engineer with many years experience and I have this year taken the plunge to work on developing my own FX strategies. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the systems available out there, and checking out the offerings from different brokers that I could get my hands on.
I'm curious as to the other fx developers out there, which systems and brokers did you settle on and why?
For me, I found that FXCM's Trading Station/Market Scope, MetaTrader, and NinjaTrader were the most popular. I saw videos/screenshots of what looked like very good system on other brokers but their account opening requirements were less-than-ideal for the individual.
Now programming language is not a concern to me, I'm confident I can learn any language (and have experience in quite a few already)... but after checking out all the systems, I found FXCMs offering to be the best in my opinion. Trading Station is as expected, it does what day traders need and there are many systems that do that, however, the backtesting and optimization is amazing - particularly the graphical interface of results for both tools is superior (love that heat map). Givenas I was originally planning on writing my own version of this, finding one already available - and free - was just heaven. I challenge anyone to show me equivalent ones for MT or NT.
While MetaTrader and NinjaTrader offer a lot of functionality, the language is not as easy to pick-up as Lua. I had never even heard of Lua until I looked into the FXCM products but the fact that I could open a demo account, download the software, develop my own indicator and strategies in under 8 hours really sold me. The documentation and sample code-base is excellent.
MetaTrader and NinjaTrader have a lot more to offer online, with various brokers customize their own plugins, and downloadable indicators, etc. However, there was also a lot of junk (code and articles) out there which made it very frustrating to try to find good stuff. Given how easy it is to develop in Lua, that didn't really deter me as I could just read about a possible indicator and code it up myself. If I did find some good MQ4 implementation, I could just port it over.
One thing I must admit though is the MetaTrader community is huge, so it is probably easier to find help or build a network - however, maybe it is too big? One thing I like about Lua is their community is very centralized either on DailyFX or FXCodeBase - getting support is easy. I have to admit though, the Lua community seems less mature than Meta world...
Anyway, interested in hearing your thoughts.
I'm curious as to the other fx developers out there, which systems and brokers did you settle on and why?
For me, I found that FXCM's Trading Station/Market Scope, MetaTrader, and NinjaTrader were the most popular. I saw videos/screenshots of what looked like very good system on other brokers but their account opening requirements were less-than-ideal for the individual.
Now programming language is not a concern to me, I'm confident I can learn any language (and have experience in quite a few already)... but after checking out all the systems, I found FXCMs offering to be the best in my opinion. Trading Station is as expected, it does what day traders need and there are many systems that do that, however, the backtesting and optimization is amazing - particularly the graphical interface of results for both tools is superior (love that heat map). Givenas I was originally planning on writing my own version of this, finding one already available - and free - was just heaven. I challenge anyone to show me equivalent ones for MT or NT.
While MetaTrader and NinjaTrader offer a lot of functionality, the language is not as easy to pick-up as Lua. I had never even heard of Lua until I looked into the FXCM products but the fact that I could open a demo account, download the software, develop my own indicator and strategies in under 8 hours really sold me. The documentation and sample code-base is excellent.
MetaTrader and NinjaTrader have a lot more to offer online, with various brokers customize their own plugins, and downloadable indicators, etc. However, there was also a lot of junk (code and articles) out there which made it very frustrating to try to find good stuff. Given how easy it is to develop in Lua, that didn't really deter me as I could just read about a possible indicator and code it up myself. If I did find some good MQ4 implementation, I could just port it over.
One thing I must admit though is the MetaTrader community is huge, so it is probably easier to find help or build a network - however, maybe it is too big? One thing I like about Lua is their community is very centralized either on DailyFX or FXCodeBase - getting support is easy. I have to admit though, the Lua community seems less mature than Meta world...
Anyway, interested in hearing your thoughts.