Automated Trading Software - The Thing Which Relies On Many Other Things

Automated trading software, if you will, is the glue that holds a number of other things together.

But should any of those other things fail, then so does the automated trading software.

Obviously the software has to place orders at the broker. And to do that, brokers provide a so-called "API". Someone at that company programmed the API. Coding is never 100% accurate. Bugs in the API means bugs in your automated trading software. At the very least, it means you have to do extra coding to get around those bugs in the API. At worst, it could make using that broker a waste of time.

It's a similar story with the database. They're pretty big and complex, and there are bound to be bugs somewhere in there. And just like the API, bugs in the database range from annoyances to reasons to switch databases.

To connect to your automated trading software to the database, you need another thing which does the connecting. That's programmed by someone else too. If it don't work, then you ain't connecting to the database, and your automated trading software don't work. So to speak.

To connect to the broker, you need to be connected to the Internet. If your modem is a dud, then so is your automated trading software. If your Internet service provider often has outages, so does your automated trading software. If a hurricane takes out the Internet connection to Taiwan, and you live in the area, then it really doesn't matter how good your automated trading software is - you can't use it anyhow.

Generally people like charts in trading packages. You can create the charts by yourself, but generally it's easier to buy a charting module from someone else. Hope there's no bugs in it. At least, no big ones.

There are also packages out there to do all the indicator calculation. Saves a lot of time over doing it all yourself.

And in my case, my software connects to my webhost to verify your subscription details. So if they go down, well, so does the software.

So pretty much all the automated trading software does by itself, is work out when to buy and sell. Just about everything else is integrating bits of software that other people have made. And therefore you are both grateful that other people have spent the time to create something you can plug in, and weary that if someone screws up, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Also that if something does go wrong, you are now reliant on someone else deciding that the problem is as important as you think it is.

Still, it's a tightrope worth walking.