TickQuest

A Financial Technology Company

technologies you can profit from

Trading System Development & Automated Trading

NeoTicker® provides a rich and robust development and deployment environment for trading system writers. Trading systems written in NeoTicker® can be used to trade stocks, futures and Forex directly with a brokerage.

NeoTicker® provides all the features you expect in a comprehensive trading system platform and there are eight elements that make developing trading systems in NeoTicker® truly stands out:

  • Rich set of trading system methods
  • Impossible to peek into the future
  • Choice of development environments
  • High level development
  • Testing with historical tick data
  • Rule-based and grid optimization
  • Accountable and dependable deployment
  • Top quality support

Rich Set of Trading System Methods

NeoTicker® provides an extensive set of methods for placing orders with different TIF (Time In Force). An order can be set to good 'til cancel, or set to fill or kill. With good 'til cancel orders, you do not have to write extra logic in the trading system to replace an order if it cannot be filled.

Once an order is filled a transaction is generated and logged in a database. The transactions can be referenced by the same trading system. So it is possible for a trading system to base trading decisions on previous transactions.

All orders, transactions and position methods have extension for portfolio trading. When a portfolio trading system is running, it has access to all symbols at the same time. There is no need to manually switch symbols in a portfolio trading system before applying indicators, placing orders, etc. Portfolio trading system code is easy to write and easy to understand.

Impossible to Peek into the Future

atthepointNeoTicker® trading systems use at-the-point evaluation. When you write a trading system, your focus is on the most current bar, with past data available in read-only form, and future data completely blocked out.

At-the-point evaluation is important for ensuring the quality of a complex trading system. Many products allow trading system to have access to future data and relying on programmer discipline to not peeking. This is a dangerous practice because programming errors can cause future information leaking into the logic of the trading system, making the whole trading system unsound.

If you expect to write non-trivial trading systems, or if you expect your trading systems to be reviewed by peers, at-the-point evaluation is a must have feature.

Choice of Development Environment

NeoTicker® separates trading system processing from the development environment. You can choose your preferred development environment that best fits your task on hand.

You can develop trading systems in:

  • Backtest EZ - a non-programming tool for rapid prototyping
  • Formula - NeoTicker®'s own formula language is easy-to-use and lightening fast
  • Scripts - NeoTicker® supports a variety of scripting languages for full programming power
  • External development environments - You can use an external development tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio or Borland Delphi to develop trading systems, with full access to NeoTicker® data and services via IDL interface. NeoTicker® supports both COM and Microsoft .NET 2.0

High Level Development

With NeoTicker®, you will save development time. NeoTicker® comes with a large collection of trading related tools and ample trading system examples. So you will be productive immediately.

More importantly, building on top of NeoTicker®'s proven framework makes the quality of your trading system higher. You can focus on the aspect that matters most - the logic that makes your trading system tick. You don't have to worry if some low level code is functioning properly.

Some of the benefits includes:

  • Access to 200+ built-in indicators
  • Access to a rich set of trading related functions
  • Advanced features such as compress series, tick replay, indicator-on-indicator

Testing with Historical and Real-time Tick Data

Most programs limit you to test trading systems with historical data of the same time frame, e.g. if your trading system is designed to trade on 5-minute bars, you can only test the trading system with 5-minute historical bars. Historical bars by their nature do not capture the complete dynamics in a real-time market. Consequently, testing results based on historical bars can only provide a very rough picture on how a system will perform in real-life.

NeoTicker® innovates the idea of testing trading systems with historical and real-time tick data. When testing with tick data, ticks are sent to a trading system and the trading system will react to the data on a tick-by-tick basis, identical to the situation when the trading system is running in real-life.

This is the most realistic way to test trading systems. It provides the highest quality testing results and gives you better insights into your trading systems that you cannot gain from traditional historical bar testing.

Ruled Based and Grid Optimization

Finally, a true breakthrough in optimization technology. NeoTicker®'s Grid Optimizer works on high level rules, rather than simple numeric ranges. Optimization rules enables you to optimize on diverse parameters like time frames, trading time, formulas and strings. With such diverse rules, there is a whole new universe of trading strategies to explore.

Grid Optimizer's Smart Search is an adaptive algorithm that can search through parameter space intelligently, converging quickly to a solution. Unlike other technologies, Smart Search does not require you to rewrite your trading system to utilize it.

Grid Optimizer is built using grid computing technology. You can spread cases to multiple computers to optimize. With two computers, your optimization speed doubles. With four computers, your optimization speed quadruples, and so on. With grid optimization, you are no longer limited by the speed of a single computer. You can now cover a lot more cases in a practical way to discover the best trading strategy.

Accountable and Dependable Deployment

transactionorientedWhen you need to deploy your trading system in real-time, NeoTicker® is an accountable and dependable platform.

We worked with leading brokerages so your trading system can send orders directly to your trading account. Before an order is sent, NeoTicker® logs the order in a database. When your broker fills the order, NeoTicker® will receive an update and logs the transaction in the database.

Having a database means you have the facility to query and trace discrepancy between trading system trades and actual trades. With NeoTicker®, you can easily identify deployment problems and correct them.

NeoTicker® is designed from ground up with real-time processing in mind. Ticks are reliably and efficiently delivered to trading systems. NeoTicker® uses a scalable architecture when evaluating trading systems in real-time to ensure the whole platform can handle the intensiveness of real-time data and complex trading systems.

We understand you invest a lot of time on writing trading systems. So we provide a platform that can carry it out for you in real-life.

Top Quality Support

Many companies today rely on call centers to handle the bulk of support calls. In our view, this is the wrong approach to handle any complex issues. Do you really expect call center staffs to resolve your trading system issues?

With TickQuest, you are not dealing with a mass market company. NeoTicker® is a premium trading software and comes with the support and service only a dedicated software company can provide.

We work closely with you to make your automated trading system work. Support questions are handled by competent staffs in a timely manner.