Hi I am a former s/w developer working as a full time trader now. I do mostly swing trading - in the style of mark minervini and/or ONeil. Currently my account is with TD ameritrade and I am using TOS for trading. My goal is to slowly automate most of the tedious stuff. In this regard, I was trying to decide between the following strategies to be able to search the stocks that follow the patterns I am looking for 1. Learn thinkscript and use it to screen stocks that I can then manually look at. This prevents me from needing to get any stock data. The disadvantage is that thinkscript seems to be a not very good language to do complex things (I was told by an expert to change platforms to Tradestation instead of using thinkscript 2. The second option is to get stock data and then use any language to write code (such as nodejs or python). This is a longer term solution but then I would be responsible for maintaining the data etc (plus the additional cost - which I dont think is a major factor). 3. If in future, I try to use the trading API to send orders, is there any difference in terms of speed of execution, slippage etc - compared to if I use the TOS application to manually place orders? I am just trying to choose the right alternative so I dont waste a whole lot of time. I have already code that works with TOS API to download account/transaction data. Would appreciate any help/advice. Thank you
In your trading style, does it matter whether an order gets sent and filled within 10 ms, 100 ms, or 1 second? If none of this matters than you can choose anything you like.
I am right now sort of stuck with Ameritrade as all my accounts are with them. I have already used their APIs to download account data etc (have not used the order submitting API yet). That is why I was comparing thinkscript with other options
What have you found to be unreliable with TD's systems? I use TOS for day trading NQ futures and have found it to be strong on ad hoc analytics though sometimes delayed on prices with some minor glitches in P&L reporting.
I was also working as a full-time engineer but when I started to trade forex, I realized that it is a better option for me. After trading forex part-time for around 1 year, I switched to full-time forex trading.
like @HobbyTrading said, if your strategy doesn't rely on seconds (and if turnover is low + holding period long) then anything should fly for now