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Just starting out. Automated Trading: MultiCharts or Ninjatrader
Hello everyone, I'm just getting started with the world of automated trading. I am a software developer with about 20 years or so experience in java and Delphi (pascal). My trading experience is about 5 years of only equities and options trading.
I have already created a strategy in ninjatrader. The programming is pretty easy for me to figure out so far. At least to get strategies working. I'm only using the free yahoo data just to see if what I am doing is working as expected. I dont think (at first) I will need to backtest tick data, only minute data.
I do not have a broker yet for day trading. I'm leaning towards IB.
My question is what do you think I should start programming with?
From what I have read, ninjatrader is buggy and has issues. Multicharts is stable but has no dom (which is not really an issue for me). I know pascal, and I have heard that multicharts is easylanguage based which I hear is pascal based.... II plan on doing lots of testing of strategies before i start live trading. I will get demo of mc once I have a broker that works with it.
So which would you all recommend I start out with? MC or NT?
Thanks
I'm hoping that my interest in trading (which is very strong) and my experience in programming will make me of use here with some of the members here that are not software developers. My passion for programming has waned over the years due to corporations draining the life out of me. I'm hoping this will stir the old love of programming I once had before it became a tiresome job.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
From a pure programming perspective, I would go for neither NT or MC.
I have over three years experience with developing NT Strategies, but have now moved to Sierra Charts for these reasons:
Uses C++ so is fast
SC consumes far fewer PC resources
It is very stable and has never crashed
Has very responsive support and product development
Development of multi time frame and multi instrument strategies is very straightforward
The programming language is very intuitive for experienced programmers
SC integrates well with IB TWS whereas NT seems to have frequent issues with the TWS API - for example NT does not work with IB financial advisor whereas SC does.
If the choice is MC vs NT, so EL vs C#, I will recommend NT: for an IT guy, programming C# is easier than EL (which is easier for non IT guys).
If you are good in Java, and if IB is an option for you, you can also use directly the IB Java API, without having to pay for another trading software.
Well, to be honest, I have never been a fan of C++, but I will certainly check it out. So far, NT seems pretty simple to get strategies running, although I find the interface a bit clunky (using NT 7) and it lacks some customizing that would help a developer. I realize that I am used to development environments and these are not full fledged IDEs however.
So Sierracharts is not a product you buy once correct? I see the pricing is monthly? Is that the only option? The price is quite low, which is nice. I enrolled in the upcoming webinar. I am going to try out NT, MultiCharts and SierraCharts thanks to these suggestions.
What were the conclusions of your trials?
I noticed multicharts has a strong integration with Visual Studio IDE with access to c# OOP and all the benefits that come along.