Franklin Dattein

This is a quick review of the Marketcetera Automated Trading System.

Pros:
- Youtube channel with a lot of usefull Screencasts
- Active community and forum.
- Easy to install on Windows machines, trough and .exe that comes with all you need.
- View and Model Layers are decoupled. You can run it in a server and access it remotely or locally via the GUI, called Photon.
- Uses the FIX standard protocol.
- Has a Fix simulator at http://exchange.marketcetera.com/marketDisplay
- Built in Java, which means it runs in any platform and is highly extensible.
- It us Open Source with paid support. It means that if you are running it with real money and you have a problem, you have someone to hire and fix it.
- The Strategies can be written in Java and Ruby.
- Strategies can be rapidly coded inside of Photon or in any Java IDE.
- The graphical interface (Photon) is based on Eclipse RCP

Cons:
- Doesn’t work with Proxy Connections.
- Doesn’t have a Realtime Graph (It has a JFreechart plugin to generate (poor) graphs. It would be nice to get the Graphs from EclipseTrader and integrate on Marketcetera.
- Difficult to Backtest based on CSV files. (It requires a plugin)
- Does not support protocols other than FIX.

As I promised, this is the first review of an Automated Trading System (ATS).

It’s called Open Forex Platform. Although the name mentions Forex, it also works in other finacial markets. It first started as a Forex tool, changed to a more generic approach and the name remained.

Check list
- Source code: It is open source GPL V3. The overal quality of the code is good, the organization of the projects is very clear and the business logic is separated of the UI code. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have unit tests.
- Updated documentation: here are some wiki pages, but they are outdated (I wouldn’t expect anything different in a version under 1.0).  On the other hand, the Forum is active.
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In the past6 months I have been using most of my free time to learn about the Stock Market, Forex Market and Automated Trading Tools.

I have faced several new terms and theories about Automated Trading Systems (ATS), as well as many testimonials from people who earned a lot of money and others who lost.
I will be probably writing more about this subject on the coming months, as a way to record my findings.
If I suddenly stop writing about it, is because I became rich (or bored)

All topics regarding Automated Trading will be placed under the “Trading” category.

I will try to write (and learn) about the following topics, in the order they are listed below:

1. Automated Trading Systems (ATS): I will first write a review about all the tools I have tested. So far I have had a chance to look deeper into these: MetaTrader, WealthLab, OpenForexPlatform, EclipseTrader, JBooktrader, ActiveQuant, AIOtrade, Marketcetera and some others.
I have created a check list to evaluate these tools, taking in consideration some aspects like, but not limited to these:

Is the source code available?
Is there support available through forum or mailing list?
How many people are currently developing this tool?
Does it have a user interface?
Can it place orders programatically in a real broker?
How easy is it to run a strategy against historical data?
Does it follow market patterns like the FIX protocol?
Does it support Parameters optimization, Genetic Programming and Neural Networks?

2. Brokers: The most popular brokers in the market and their taxes. I have evaluated Interactive Brokers, Banif, Itaú, FXDD and WinTrade, so far.

3. Strategies, Setups or Advisor: Every tool gives it a different name. I prefer Strategy. It is basically the algorithm that implements the Trading Logic. I have tested some Enterprise Advisors for Meta Trader, some setups from Leandro & Stormer DVDs (famous traders in Brazil) and some other Strategies posted on contests around the internet.

4. Books and Articles: I have already bought some books and read tons of articles. Only the most relevant will be reviewed.

The final goal is to write a software capable of analyzing real-time market data and place orders automatically, with a low risk and high profits.