FAQ

 
Automated Trading FAQ

Q. Why use automated trading software?

Q. Why use *this* automated trading software?

Q. Will automated trading make me rich?
 

Thinking Stuff's ATM - What Is It? FAQ

Q. What does this software do, exactly?

Q. Where do I download it from?

Q. Does it trade shares? Futures? Currency?

Q. What is ATM's relationship to MetaTrader / TradeStation / NinjaTrader / Wealth-Lab / Other?

Q. What brokers does it interact with?

Q. Why were these brokers chosen?

Q. What's the trading system that this software uses?

Q. I don't know of any good trading systems, so what's the point of using this software?

Q. Can you see how I have set up my trading systems? What about my account details?

Q. Can ATM do gridding? How about carry trading?

Q. I've had a bit of a look at your software, and your charts are okay, but nothing fantastic.

Q. I've had a bit of a look at your software, and your interface is okay, but nothing fantastic.
 

Thinking Stuff's ATM - Usage & Support FAQ

Q. How do I set up trading systems?

Q. What trading rules are available to choose from?

Q. What kind of help pages are available?

Q. Can I directly access the price data it downloads, or is that in some kind of proprietary format?

Q. Can I store the data anywhere I like on my hard-drive, or even a different hard-drive?

Q. Why don't you provide price data pre-installed or available from this website?

Q. Why do we need to use a Gmail account to send ourselves alerts?
 

Thinking Stuff's ATM - Purchasing FAQ

Q. What does it cost?

Q. Do I have to pay for support?
 

Thinking Stuff's ATM - Installation FAQ

Q. What are the installation requirements?
 

I Am Really, Really Interested FAQ

Q. Spell it out for me - what should I do next?

Q. How many trading systems should I test?
 

Answers

 
Q. Why use automated trading software?

So many reasons to use automated trading software (otherwise known as a "trading-bot"):

• It removes the emotional side to trading. Book after book has told you and me that emotions (namely fear and greed) are the biggest hurdle for traders, and the reason why most traders fail. Trading-bots don't become over-confident after a big win. And they can still pull the trigger after a big loss.
• It adds 100% discipline. Book after book has told you and me that lack of discipline is the other reason why most traders fail.
• Passive Income Generator. Kick it off and go do something else. Even work.
• Take care of your family. Okay, you know how to trade. You're quite good at it. But if something happened to you, you'd want to ensure your family is still being looked after, right? Set up your trading-bot using your specialised knowledge, then demonstrate how to use the On/Off switch.
• Everything is automatic. It downloads prices for future backtests, it calculates entries, stops, exits, the amount of money to risk, whether or not this trade should be taken in light of the past X trades, it stores the details of trades, the amount won/lost, and more, and continues to do all of this while you're sleeping, at the beach, or in a different country.
• It removes the boring administrative side of trading - the recording of trades for your own purposes and for tax purposes. Now everything's stored for you, and all you have to do is use the Search and Print buttons.

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Q. Why use *this* automated trading software?

The big, big difference between ATM and the other automated-trading software is that the others all require you learn some kind of programming language to create your trading systems. In our software, it's all mouse clicks. You want to add a new rule, you click the Add button. (Click on the image to see it in full-size).

Then you select your rule from a pull-down menu.

If you want to later delete that rule, you select it and click Delete.

It doesn't get much simpler.

[Note: screenshots from v2].

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Q. Will automated trading make me rich?

Not necessarily. Automated trading is good in that it does stuff automatically.

Automated trading is not so good in that it can only do automatically, what you tell it to do. A flawed trading system, automated, is still flawed.

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Q. Is there something shorter we can call it, rather than Thinking Stuff's Automated Trading Machine?

Any of these will be fine:

• Thinking Stuff's ATM
• TSATM
• ATM (preferred)
• TS (historical)

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Q. What does this software do, exactly?

Read the 30 second explanation.

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Q. Where do I download it from?

The download page (oddly enough).

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Q. Does it trade shares? Futures? Currency?

Right now it trades currency only. In the future it will also trade shares and/or futures, but not now.

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Q. What is ATM's relationship to MetaTrader / TradeStation / NinjaTrader / Wealth-Lab / Other?

None, other than they all have similar goals.

You can probably do in each what you can do in the other. However, with ATM you can do it even with zero knowledge of computer programming. (The others all have their own scripting language).

In ATM it's all mouse clicks.

You may have thought that we take your settings in ATM and convert them into code, which can then be plugged in to one of the others. But this is not the case. With ATM you can create trading systems, backtest them, and have them trade automatically. You can set up alerts and be notified by email or SMS. And you can do this without any programming knowledge. However, in no way do we connect to or use any of those other trading software packages to achieve this.

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Q. What brokers does it interact with?

At first it will work with FXCM. Then after that most likely MB Trading and Interactive Brokers.

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Q. Why were these brokers chosen?

They all offer no-dealing desks. What that means is, they take your order and place it straight onto the wholesale market. They do not take a trade in the opposite direction as counter-party (which is how most forex brokers operate, and which actually makes their success dependent on your failure).

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Q. What's the trading system that this software uses?

Actually, this software doesn't have any pre-set trading systems. You create your own, and test it out, and then set it to be traded automatically.

The beauty of this software is that you can create your trading systems simply with mouse clicks. You don't have to learn any programming language. There is no coding.

For instructions on how to create your trading systems within ATM, see that FAQ.

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Q. I don't know of any good trading systems, so what's the point of using this software?

That is the point of using this software. ATM allows you to backtest trading systems. So, if you have an idea, or perhaps you bought a trading system from a different website, you can easily see what the results would have been.

Further, experimenting with different ideas, adding a new rule and seeing the effect, removing a rule and seeing the effect, changing the parameters of your existing rules, etc, is very, very simple.

In short, you can use this software to help you come up with your trading system.

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Q. Can you see how I have set up my trading systems? What about my account details?

No. ATM connects directly to your broker. When you place trades and so on, the connection is from you to them directly. It is not you-us-them.

The privacy policy has more information.

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Q. Can ATM do gridding? How about carry trading?

Yes and no. Well, no to gridding. Carry trading maybe. It depends on what your entry rules are - if they are based on technical analysis then there is no reason why ATM can't do that for you. But you would need multiple trading systems - one for each currency that you want to include in your "basket".

See the limitations section for more things ATM can't do.

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Q. I've had a bit of a look at your software, and your charts are okay, but nothing fantastic.

Yes, this software has charts, but it is not charting software. ATM is more accurately described as "automated trading software, with charts". There are many programs which have far, far better charting capabilities. In no way do we pretend to be competing with specialty charting software.

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Q. I've had a bit of a look at your software, and your interface is okay, but nothing fantastic.

Correct, and in fact in some places it's downright ugly. Our focus is on ease-of-use, not aesthetics.

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Q. How do I set up trading systems?

These pages will tell you everything you need to know:

• Systems trading theory
• The trading systems tag in the wiki shows a lot of posts which show how the theory in the first link is applied in ATM.
• Common mistakes when creating trading systems in particular, should be very helpful.
• The example trading systems tag in the wiki shows both educational and real-world examples.

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Q. What trading rules are available to choose from?

The "Available Trading Rules" page lists them. If you want different rules, ATM gives you the ability to create custom indicators... with your mouse!

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Q. What kind of help pages are available?

See the Help page.

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Q. Can I directly access the price data it downloads, or is that in some kind of proprietary format?

The settings file and price data files are standard relational databases. Like Microsoft Access files, if you're familiar with that. But Microsot Access has some size restrictions, so instead we use Firebird SQL embedded databases. Same but different. To open these files and peek inside you can grab some freeware (and help documentation) from sqlmanager.net.

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Q. Can I store the data anywhere I like on my hard-drive, or even a different hard-drive?

Yes. Just like Microsoft Access files can be given any filename and be stored anywhere, moved around, copied, renamed, etc, so can the files that ATM produces. Just make sure that ATM is closed down before doing any of those things.

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Q. Why don't you provide price data pre-installed or available from this website?

The short answer is, because none of the brokers allow the distribution of their price data. Price data is a commodity, and brokers keep tight control. Price data can be downloaded from a broker, it can be used by the person that did the downloading, but that person is not allowed to pass it on to other people.

ATM provides you with the ability to download as much price data from your broker as you want. This may take some time and effort, and yes it is time and effort that we have already gone through. So it would be much easier for you, our customer, if we just made it available. However, we must follow the brokers' rules and therefore we cannot distribute their price data without their permission.

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Q. Why do we need to use a Gmail account to send ourselves alerts?

I guess there are two questions there really:

1. Why do you need to enter an email address for the sending of alerts along with another one (potentially the same one) which will receive those emails?
2. Why does the sending email address have to be Gmail? (The receiving email address can be anything).

You're probably aware that with email, there must be both a sender and a receiver. Emails you read in your inbox have been sent from somebody. We used to use our own email address for sending those emails, but due to the high volume it started looking like we were spammers. Therefore we started making everybody use their own email addresses to send themselves emails.

We could have spent a lot of time working out how to send email through various providers, but ATM is automated trading software, and we thought it was better if our time was spent working on automated trading features.

We were already using Gmail, and Gmail is free with a stack of storage space, so it was easiest and quickest to ask customers to sign up for a Gmail account if they hadn't already done so.

The email address that receives the emails does not have to be Gmail - it can be Hotmail, Yahoo!, your work email, your mobile/cell phone email if it has one, and so on. Anything.

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Q. What does it cost?

ATM costs nothing, and is currently released as freeware.

ATE, our premium service where we do everything for you, of course will cost. This service is to be launched properly once ATM v3 is stable.

See the purchase page for our planned pricing.

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Q. Do I have to pay for support?

No, support is also free. However we ask that most questions be asked through our forum.

Only if you need to provide personal information should you contact us directly.

We will try our best to respond within 24 hours of receiving your query, however this is not always possible.

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Q. What are the installation requirements?

ATM runs on Microsoft Windows XP and above. We are not sure about Windows 2000.

The installer will help you with the rest.

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Q. Spell it out for me - what should I do next?

 
In relation to trading in general

First, realise this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. If you have told your family you are going to be rich by next Christmas, you may have to backtrack a little. And I don't care if next Christmas is 3 or 300 days away.

The only way to get rich quick is to risk a lot. And trust me when I say that the minute you get cocky/adventurous/greedy and risk a lot is the very same time that you lose it all and never recover. We want to do the opposite. Follow the steps in my "Managing Risk" article.

In relation to our software

If you're brand new to trading in general, read the basics, especially the bit about technical analysis.

Then:

1. Download and install our automated trading machine.
2. Start ATM for the first time. That it starts is a good indication you've done everything right so far :-)
3. Create a new settings file.
4. The Helper Wizard opens automatically the first time you start ATM. Follow the steps outlined in that wizard.
5. Read the "Getting Started" post.

Or just go ahead and read everything in the wiki. I know you want to.

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Q. How many trading systems should I test?

Well you should test as many as you can.

As for how many you should run at the same time risking real money, that's more of an art. You may well have just one trading system that you know and trust. Or, you might have 10 trading systems running at the same time, each designed to take advantage of slightly different market conditions.

While trading live in your real account, I think you should always be testing new ones in your demo account. The market doesn't remain stagnant, and you should always be experimenting with new ideas. There's really no downside to experimenting, especially since you can test your ideas in a demo/game account where none of your money is at risk. The worst case is you stick with your original system(s).

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