Moving to TradeStation, too

Hi Mark,

Sorry to read about your tribulations. Hang in there.

I went to my mentor last week. Sam showed me Fibonacci and gap strategies. He showed me several stocks he thought would go down and a few bullish ones. I played several. I didn't play CMI (coulda made a bundle) and I did play GS and MRO. So far, they don't look good, especially after today's rally. I'm ahead in more spreads than I am behind in but GS and MRO have me in the red.

...

I sent a check to Interactive Brokers a day before I saw your post about TradeStation. I looked at the TS web site and liked it. IB returned my check because it had my old address. I felt so happy about the returned check that I knew I really wanted to try TS. Did you know there are third party plug-ins that you can use to automate your trading? All I would need is a computer and a Doberman. I would feed the dog and the dog would keep me from touching the computer. Anyway, I'll fund the account after my options expire on 11/17, if I have any cash left. -- GG

He who has injured thee was either stronger or weaker than thee.
If weaker, spare him; if stronger, spare thyself. --Seneca

GG, thank you for your support. I'm making a comeback from the recent emotional and trading lows. I just needed a little time to mourn. I can't afford any more mourning, so it's time to move on. That's over and aside from having an over-extended schedule, I'll be back in the markets soon enough (later this week for paper trading at least).

It seems like we'll be on the same timeline for funding our TradeStation accounts. I'm looking to TS to leverage my time a bit better. From my understanding you can program in automatic trading without 3rd party tools by simply using EasyLanguage. As a programmer, this should be fairly natural for me to write out my trading rules and then I won't mis-manage nor micro-manage my trades.

Of course the thought comes to mind that there is no "black-box" trading system that will work, which puzzles me a little, I must say. Since, logically, if you are strictly trading by your rules, you are essentially being your own black-box system. I imagine my entry rules will be pretty simple, but my exit rules will be a bit more interesting when I get around to programming them into TradeStation. It's all very interesting and I don't know exactly what to make of it. I'm most certainly going to be more involved in choosing which trades to enter, but even that will be honed down to a strict set of explicit rules that should be able to be described in TradeStation's EasyLanguage. It's a head-scratcher for now.

Aside from EasyLanguage, TradeStation's charts are top-notch and, along with a 22" ViewSonic widescreen display that I recently purchased, ought to save me some time in evaluating any given chart. Yes, that's right, I'm beginning my equipment upgrades with a rather large second flat-panel display. Eventually I'm sure I'll have about 4 or more displays working for me, but 2 will have to do for now.

Mark