There are numerous providers out there that have Excel add in's that allow you retrieve free financial data from yahoo or Google..and also link to specific brokers like IB and TDA. The good ones are obviously not free. For the simple minded like myself..Excel is adequate and actually very good..it does not take much learning to be able to customize data to assist with trading decisions..autotrading is a different ball game as you know..and very hard to get consistent..due to the nature of financial markets..but this will never stop people trying
As far as I know..done with COM via IB's API..not java..that I do know..all details can be found on IB web pages..they even provide a sample Excel file..but it is crap compared to the add in that I use..which I purchased from qmatix.com..this is by far the best Excel integration tool to connect to IB..and various other brokers as listed..I first got it in 2003 and still use it today! Fwiw..all these "tools" are of limited value unless you know what you are doing..you can not turn a sow's ear into a silk purse..no matter how hard you try..not even the Chinese have done it
I will make one comment however! Most programmers haven't a clue about trading..and very few "successful" retail traders are programmers..if you could get 2 good ones together..then you would have a very good chance to develop a worthwhile auto trading system..but..the big problem is that it would have to be a secret..for if the "code" got out..it would be rendered useless very quickly as more copies of it come online..this is probably why it never happens!
This is true of everything when it comes to programming. You ever notice how there's a lot of really cool visual features that are awesome when you see the demo...and annoying as hell when you realize it adds 2 seconds to the task you want to do Every. Single Time?! I know just enough about programming to be dangerous. And not enough to stay safe. Granted...you could say the same about my trading abilities.
Your site looks pretty interesting, but it is pretty vague. I'm sure that is because your are in development phase. Would you care to give a brief summary of what it is you plan to offer? Are you trying to create an open source exchange or something?
In the spirit of the FSF and OSI, we at Ritchie believe that, for an exchange to be "fair and orderly," all exchange data must be free and available to all market participants, for both display and non-display use. Our definition of "exchange data" includes the following: Tick data for all financial instruments listed on the exchange Market order queues Volume Order book/depth of market (DOM) queues at all price levels "Ritchie Ring" circular FIFO, which processes incoming market orders Matching engine output We seek the utopian "Level Playing Field," where all market participants have access to the same data, at the same price.
You're site says exchange but your concept looks a lot more like some sort of ATS internalizer from what little info there is. The IEX is the 13th exchange in the U.S.. It took an enormous amount of regulatory red tape and VC from nearly a dozen large companies. That is a legit lit exchange, what I think of when I saw your claim of being an exchange. You talk of being fair, however I see the IEX model actually making a level playing field. For example the IEX places price (bids & offers) over queues which have been gamed to death by spoofing/layering on the other exchanges. They have a built in delay to prevent predatory front running HFTs from operating whereas the good market making HFTs like this. They do not allow collocation, in fact you have to be at least 42 miles from their exchange. Maybe I just didn't understand what you are doing. Perhaps this is more about providing tick data for the API users and not about matching buyers with sellers.
The tickdata works for me. I had sent you a msg on discord 1-2 weeks ago, so I'm glad to see an update. Is the github up to date? It seems to be missing some files, but I was able to make a few modifications to compile my own tickGenerator. Btw you've committed a number of binary files that really shouldn't be committed (current cloned repo size is 192MB). I realize it's still very early stage. I'm looking forward to see a more in depth architecture doc. I suspect you'll find more contributors once it's clear how to actually contribute.
Thanks, Lee. Good eye; I will delete the binaries. I have written some other exchange code that I haven't committed yet. Now that I have the concept pretty solidly in mind, I think that the coding will go fairly quickly. I did make up a "To Do" list, and put it on the Web site. Building an exchange is not as easy as I thought that it would be! http://www.ritchiestockexchange.com/todo.html
Re: Data feed to Excel, I see now. You just want a simple Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) interface to the feed. I thought that you wanted to gather historical data. I plan to offer you the ability to buy and sell a financial instrument for one U.S. quarter (US$0.25) per trade. Free tick data, and total visibility to book data... none of which is delayed or a VWAP.