Trading APIs

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10-02-2011
Epy

Trading APIs

Has anyone here used any trading APIs? If so, what and how nice are the APIs, trading costs, etc.

I keep reading about people making programs to trade for them and making a ton of money, figure I'll give it a shot. I've got the time and money to do it, so why not.

From what I've read so far, I'm hearing that the following are good choices:
www.interactivebrokers.com
www.tradeking.com
Online Trading - Stock Broker, Buy Stocks Online, Stock Market, Options Trading

Interactive Brokers seems to offer a handful of different language bindings and only has a $1 trade fee.

It really looks like there's a ton of different options, I guess I'd prefer whatever has the lowest fees since I won't dump much money into it until I get some results.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
10-02-2011
CommonTater

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epy

I keep reading about people making programs to trade for them and making a ton of money, figure I'll give it a shot.

Odd how you never hear about the people who try this and lose everything....
10-02-2011
Epy

Right, you can of course lose money, so I would try and write as conservative a program as possible. Probably wouldn't make much money at all, but my goal is to just let something sit there and make money as opposed to making a ton of money.
10-02-2011
laserlight

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epy

I would try and write as conservative a program as possible. Probably wouldn't make much money at all

That's the problem with being conservative, isn't it? :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epy

my goal is to just let something sit there and make money as opposed to making a ton of money.

My impression of algotrading is that you are going to have to spend lots of time arriving at a suitable algorithm, and then you still have to monitor the situation and tweak it, so this "just let something sit there" approach is probably fantasy unless you want to lose money.
10-02-2011
novacain

Quote:

Originally Posted by Epy

I keep reading about people making programs to trade for them and making a ton of money, figure I'll give it a shot. I've got the time and money to do it, so why not.

I get those emails as well, I just ignore them as 'boiler room' or churn (brokers make money on each trade so have a vested interest in you making lots of trades).

I wrote share trading software, including the conditional ordering system for Australia's second (then) largest online trader.

I doubt any feed you get from a 'free' source will be accurate enough to trade in the time frames required.
10-03-2011
Epy

No one said anything about a free source, I know it'd be a pay for service. And I haven't gotten any emails about this, I've read about it in the news.

Negative opinions aside, does anyone know of a good platform? I'm not so sure about interactive brokers anymore because of the large minimum account balance required.
10-03-2011
novacain

Day traders (High Frequency Traders) operate in millisecond timeframes, often holding stock for less than a minute. It is why there is somewhat of a resurgence in C++ over C# (the fractions of a millisecond matter in this type of trading as well as LLTs).

People think it is as simple as monitoring the stock price and sending a buy/sell when the price is right, but there are multiple other factors that will influence the decision to trade a stock.

A conditional ordering system (or algorithmic trading) requires access to not only stock prices but significant market events (earnings, forecasts, halts, mergers, news, FED announcements etc). Without access to these events (and exactly what they mean to the decision to trade), your system will fail the first time a company reports some news to the market.
10-03-2011
Subsonics

Are all algorithmic trading necessarily high frequency trading though?
10-03-2011
Yarin

Quote:

Originally Posted by Subsonics

Are all algorithmic trading necessarily high frequency trading though?

Probably not, it all depends on the model you're looking to implement, right from the beginning.
10-03-2011
Subsonics

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yarin

Probably not, it all depends on the model you're looking to implement, right from the beginning.

That was my thinking, but it was a reply to novacain who said it was a requirement as I understood it. I can see how you can take advantage of having market information before everyone else as it creates arbitrage that can be taken advantage of, (if you have a huge data center not more than a few miles from the source).
10-03-2011
novacain

Quote:

Originally Posted by Subsonics

Are all algorithmic trading necessarily high frequency trading though?

No but often these systems rely on LLT (low latency transactions) to make a profit.

Either way, without access to, and understanding of, external market events any algorithmic trading system will fail.

ie Do you buy or sell resource stocks if the Australian Reseve Bank drops interest rates?
10-03-2011
Subsonics

Quote:

Originally Posted by novacain

No but often these systems rely on LLT (low latency transactions) to make a profit.

Either way, without access to, and understanding of, external market events any algorithmic trading system will fail.

ie Do you buy or sell resource stocks if the Australian Reseve Bank drops interest rates?

Sure, that seems to be the core of the problem. I'm not suggesting that part would be easy or even doable, I just posed a question out of curiosity regarding the high frequency requirement.
10-04-2011
Epy

Might as well lock this thread, no one here either knows anything about or wants to share their knowledge of these APIs; just saying that I'm going to fail in my endeavor. If I want to go bankrupt that's my affair, the original question which still stands is if anyone has any intimate knowledge of a trading API.