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I'll take the time later in the week to summarize all the comments I've been
getting. The feedback has been very positive. However, two people have
mentioned TradeLab, and this particular mail to which I'm responding also
mentions another point I will address now.
I want to address the question of time horizon. We can focus on long term
investments and short term investments. Similarly, we can focus on long term
solutions and short term solutions. Clearly, using the currently available
trading tools, including the new release of TS 5.0 and/or TradeLab, is the
immediate solution. I certainly will use TS 5.0, and I will probably use
TradeLab as well. I think TradeLab is a very promising product. But it is
clear that using any of these tools is a short term solution only.
What if we had been discussing this proposal (public domain source for a
trading platform) when Omega first released TradeStation. We could have
bagged it, saying that Omega has our solution, just like Frank (see below)
is proposing we do now because Omega has announced a new 32 bit (Windows)
version of TS. Frank does have a good point that most of us would rather
focus on trading than on software development; however, a few of us, myself
included, like programming enough to be willing to invest some time in
building the best solution for our future needs. (In fact, I really like
programming a lot! I like it as much as trading, when I'm working on
something I want to work on.)
Sure, this new TS version is great, but many of us want the freedom and
power that is only available when the community has access to the source
code and the community -- even a single individual -- has the capability of
adding custom coding to provide new solutions as they become known. My
proposal is based on the idea of empowering a community of computer literate
traders. It is about breaking the reliance on companies that don't respond
to our needs. (If Omega was responsive, we would not be stuck with a 16 bit
program until at least 1999--this is plain ludicrous in my opinion.)
Many of us are day traders. But we don't put all our money into day trading.
We have real estate, long term stocks, or some other investments. Similarly,
we will use whatever tools are available today and keep trading. However,
investing a bit of our time into a long range solution is a wise move.
Creating public domain source for a trading platform will pay off
unbelievable dividends. Let's take a long term view.
A few years down the road 64 bit OS's will be available. Thereafter, it is
possible that most of the newest most powerful computer tools will be start
becoming available for the newest platforms (just remember back to when all
PC stuff was 16 bit and 32 bit OS's for the desktop were brand new). Will we
have to wait 5 years, or even 10 years for Omega to move TS to 64 bits? Will
we wish that we had our own source that we could recompile to work with the
current state of the art systems? I think it is wise to invest in open
source code for a public domain trading platform now. We will wish we had it
in the future if we don't build it. And building it doesn't mean we have to
stop trading now.
Furthermore, do we know that Omega has addressed all our concerns in its
latest release? I doubt it. TS 5.0 still uses EasyLanguage. Many of us want
a more powerful choice. Does TS 5 offer the mathematical precision to do
more than TS 4? We don't know yet, but I can be pretty sure it will always
offer less than what many of us wish it offered. That's been the history of
TS from day one.
To close, I'll just say thanks to all who have offered to help. The response
has been great. I'm completely surprised -- very pleasantly surprised! It is
obvious that many people completely understand the spirit of what is being
proposed here. However, I hope the above information helps those that aren't
yet as enthusiastic on the idea. It is looking like we will actually move
forward with this project!
And finally, one clarification. We are not asking people to contribute their
trading systems or even their indicators. We are proposing the creation of a
platform which will allow all the maximum flexibility in creating systems,
indicators, etc., and in testing and trading these things. Again, it will be
something like a TradeStation, but the focus is on a platform, not a
particular trading system.
Thanks to all!
-----Original Message-----
From: Koch Frank <frank@xxxxxxxx>
To: Earl Adamy <eadamy@xxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx <omega-list@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Monday, November 09, 1998 4:36 AM
Subject: Re: The Linux of Financial Trading Systems
>This proposal comes a little bit to late, I think. A new generation of
trading
>s/w will be released - TradeLab will be released in the next days,
TradeStation
>5.0 will come up in the next month's - and with the current trading s/w
>available you can make a lot of money and don't have to worry about
programming
>such a complex project. If you are interested in trading, 1st of all
concentrate
>on trading than s/w development !
>Best Regards
>Frank
>
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