[Re: Platform]
What are minimum equity requirements??
No firm minimum equity limits have yet been set However, I personally believe that to improve the odds of success, a daytrader should have an account value of $50k+. And actually, $100k+ is a preferable minimum.
Will it be possible to access data feeds with custom programs to create custom criteria conditions
Yes.
Does the account have to be funded to paper trade??
Yes.
If so, are there flat fees for paper trading before you start real trading??
I haven't worked out the details about possible costs for paper trading. Our system has been very expensive to develop and obviously, we would not want 'customers' to open an account for the exclusive purpose of paper trading. Our best customers would be currently successful daytraders who would like to automate their already successful methods to increase their trading consistency, speed and profitablity. These will be the traders we target for our upcoming beta test, and working with them to help ensure that they are successful will be our primary focus for the next ~2-3 months.
Are there historical databases and the possibility of backtesting to weed out bad systems faster or will all systems have to be tested in "paper" mode??
I don't know of anyone who markets historical Level II data because of the massive amount of file space required => each day = 250-350 MB disk space. However, we have been saving Level II historical data, although we have not configured historical back testing capability. Backtesting can be implemented in the future, based on customer demand. We could envision the platform rerunning 2-3 days of historical data every night from perhaps, 6 pm to 6 am for additional customer paper trading and fine tuning. However, this will likely be several months away. Note, however, that real-time paper trading can easily simulate 20-50++ trades per market day. It does not take too many days of testing to get a good statistical feel for the potential profitability of a new test system. |
