I'm a new TradeStation user. I have many years 20+ of experience trading on the Street but none as an individual. I know what strategy I want to employ but need a programmer to write the code and help me test it. I also need to decide whether to use Easy, Web API or FIX.

Any advice? Would pay for this forum "Elite" if enough existing users vouch that I have a good chance of finding the right consultant/programmer.

sbjencks 

I'm a new TradeStation user. I have many years 20+ of experience trading on the Street but none as an individual. I know what strategy I want to employ but need a programmer to write the code and help me test it. I also need to decide whether to use Easy, Web API or FIX. Any advice? Would pay for this forum "Elite" if enough existing users vouch that I have a good chance of finding the right consultant/programmer.

I would suggest starting by doing a search for Elite on top right where it says 'search' and read all the existing threads on this exact subject.

Mike

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sbjencks 

I'm a new TradeStation user. I have many years 20+ of experience trading on the Street but none as an individual. I know what strategy I want to employ but need a programmer to write the code and help me test it. I also need to decide whether to use Easy, Web API or FIX. Any advice? Would pay for this forum "Elite" if enough existing users vouch that I have a good chance of finding the right consultant/programmer.

Just do it, you won't regret even if you don't find programmer the knowledge base you find here would be immense.

sbjencks 

I'm a new TradeStation user. I have many years 20+ of experience trading on the Street but none as an individual. I know what strategy I want to employ but need a programmer to write the code and help me test it. I also need to decide whether to use Easy, Web API or FIX. Any advice? Would pay for this forum "Elite" if enough existing users vouch that I have a good chance of finding the right consultant/programmer.

The Elite fee has been worth it to me, and most of the currently active elite members probably would agree. There is much more than programming expertise here.

As to your exact question, there are a lot of TradeStation users on futures.io (formerly BMT), but my impression is that they are more a minority. Purely as a matter of impression, I would say that the order goes something like NinjaTrader first, then probably SierraChart, then perhaps TradesStation and then a number of others. (ThinkOrSwim is in there somewhere as well.) Therefore, there are less programming resources for TradeStation than some of the others.

I do see some TS EasyLanguage posts, and there is a thread dedicated to TradeStation indicator coding. There is a much more active thread for Ninja, however.

I have used TradeStation and written code for it, and now use Ninja and write code for it. (Professionally I am a semi-retired contract programmer but no longer do work for clients.) My opinion is that I would much rather write code for, and use, Ninja than TS. Reason: the language is just a whole lot better from a programming perspective (it is C#, a true general-purpose programming language), and it lets you get down to the nitty gritty of Windows if you need it. Easy Language is meant to be easy, but it only lets you do certain things. It's also not going to be especially "easy" for a non-programmer. However, both will actually work for most purposes.

To round the discussion out, my impression of Sierra Chart from what I have seen, but not actual use, is that it is probably as good or better than Ninja, it's built-in features are broader, and its language is C++, also a good language to code in. ThinkOrSwim is OK, but its language drove me crazy (lots of actual use there.)

So, I would say that you may find good Trade Station resources here, but the Ninja depth is much greater. Are you wedded to TradeStation? That might be another question.

Not knowing what you want, I couldn't say whether you would find programming help or a consultant for hire (or whether you would need to hire anyone.... Many requests for a hired programmer turn out to be for stuff that is actually very easy.) There is a thread for hiring a programmer; I don't recall if it's Elite or not. You can do a search for it and see. I have no idea if that would be a good avenue for you. My guess is that most hired programming for trading projects is overkill, since you're mostly just using the built-in capabilities of the trading platform and using a little code to automate or customize it, but yours may not be.

From a pure trading perspective, I myself would just go ahead and pay the hundred bucks or whatever it is now and you will end up with access to a lot of posted content that will be more valuable, probably, than any amount of programming help. And there is quite a lot of programming expertise here, for many platforms, including TS. Consider that most of the active posters are Elite members, and much of what they post is in Elite threads.

This is, of course, only my opinion and my experience, and your mileage may vary.

Bob.

Thank you for your full and thoughtful reply. I'm not particularly wed to TS except that it includes the largest sectors of the US market. I will take your advice and subscribe to the feed. I'm totally a quant guy and no doubt my initial development requirements will be easy for an experienced programmer. I'm sure also that it will need a lot of tweaking to work out and I'd be looking for someone who is reliable and will be with me for the long haul.

site is more than just programmers - is well worth the fee 100 fold return easy

Just a follow-up question on this thread.
What's the difference between the elite-only webinars here and the easy-to-access ones outside this forum (e.g., YouTube)?

asobi 

Just a follow-up question on this thread. What's the difference between the elite-only webinars here and the easy-to-access ones outside this forum (e.g., YouTube)?

At some point @Big Mike switched over to YouTube. There are several years of non-YouTube videos from before then.

Bob.