Automated Trader for The Chartist software is for trading US Power Setups provided by The Chartist. The software is provided FREE OF COST.
The software comes with:
- Host of simplified features for trading with Interactive Brokers via IB Gateway API connectivity
- Facility to handle multiple trading accounts
- Always in-sync with Interactive Brokers servers
- Ease of use
- Customisable options
- One click process for downloading, processing, placing and reporting of The Chartist's US Power Setups (activation license key required)
- Active monitoring of placed orders (useful if you are using Margin account)
- Order Shuffling (useful if you are using Non-Margin account)
- Facility to place delayed orders [coming soon]
- Set and forget hands-free feature for performing the one-click process automatically everyday at a designated time [disabled feature]
Requirements:
- Windows operating systems ( XP or higher)
- .NET Environment (usually Win7 onwards the operating systems comes pre-loaded with .NET environment)
- Internet Explorer (version 9 or higher)
- stable Internet connection (minimum speed 500kbps)
- Account with Interactive Brokers for trading
- Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation or Gateway
- Subscription to The Chartist's US Power Setups (required only if you wish to use The Chartist auto-trade feature)
Download: Visit Automated Trader for The Chartist to download this software.
Note:
- Please use a valid email address while registering to download the software.
- License key will be generated and emailed to your email address. You will have to input this license key when prompted during the first run.
- Active Monitoring: Current implementation only Cancels remaining BUY orders if the condition is satisfied. Users should be aware that it currently does not SELL excess filled orders. As the BUY orders are LMT orders, there is very low probability of number of filled positions exceeding the max. positions however do keep an eye out and manually liquidate excess filled positions whenever possible. Next version of the software will have the ability to automatically sell excess filled positions.
- Use first on your Paper Trading account: We advise users to first use this software on their demo or paper trading account and transition to actual trading account only after they are convinced that the software is doing what they expect the software to do.
- Be aware that Active Monitoring might interfere with orders other than The Chartist's orders if those other orders were placed via this software
- In case you want to run this software on multiple computers then increase the number of license's required during the registration process or contact info@theportfoliotrader.com for assistance.
- Dependency on Internet Explorer is temporary, I have included it so that the user can visualise the website login and file access actions.
- This application should run fine on LINUX and OS X/Mac OS via Mono. Due to the dependency of this version on Internet Explorer it might be a difficult ask. I have not tested this thoroughly. Contact info@theportfoliotrader.com if you want me to perform a thorough testing on LINUX or OS X/Mac OS. Next version of this software will not have Internet Explorer dependency.
- DISCLAIMER: Automated Trader for The Chartist is dependent upon the design and/or organisation of the The Chartist's website, delivery and format of trades as of today. In an event, where The Chartist's website and/or delivery and format of trades has been re-designed or re-organised, then auto-trade functionality may or may not work untill modifications have been made to this software to accomodate such changes.
Automated Trader for The Chartist
- Architecture
- Features
- How To
- Have you previously activated your license key?
- Fresh Activation
- Software Update
- Connect to IB gateway
- Subscribe to account information
- Close open positions
- Place or modify orders
- Modify / Cancel orders
- Auto Trade: Select Strategy
- Auto Trade: Web Settings
- Auto Trade: Trade Settings
- Auto Trade: Set Report Settings
- Auto Trade: Advanced
- Auto Trade: One-Click Process
- Auto Trade: Orders & Log Diary
- Auto Trade: Report Format
- Support
- License
- Risk Disclosure Statement
Note: Table of Contents generated with DocToc
The architecture of this software is presented in the figure below:
This provides a simplified user-interface and connectivity to Interactive Brokers gateway. All settings are stored locally on your computer. Every time the application is loaded, these settings are retrieved for your convenience.
- Connection
- Connection status indicator
- Connect to IB Gateway by setting IP address, log level, port number and client id including a toggle Connect/Disconnect button
- Log: Server logs, Error logs, Clear error log button
-
Account
- Select Account from drop-down menu
- Subscribe/Unsubscribe toggle button and Clear Account Info buttons
- Account number indicator
- Last sync time indicator
- Summary, Portfolio and Open Positions tabs
- Close Position by right-click in Portfolio and Open Positions tab
-
Orders
- New Order, Global Cancel, Refresh Live Orders and Trade Log buttons
- Safety check for Global Cancel
- New Order pop-up window with Basic Order, Extended Attributes, Volatility, Scale and IB Algo settings options including facility to Check Margin
- Next Order-ID in-sync with IB Gateway
- Live Orders and Trade Log tab
- Modify or Cancel Order by right-click in Live Orders
- Settings
- All settings i.e. connection, contract and order settings saved in an XML file (ibSet.xml)
- Every time the application loads, it will retrieve settings from the settings XML file
- In-Sync
- Always in-sync with IB Gateway i.e. whenever IB Gateway delivers data, all logs, account summary, portfolio changes, order status changes are updated
This provides an user-interface to alter settings for trading using The Chartist's US Power Setups and to perform one-click trading. All settings are stored locally on your computer, using strong encryption where required. Every time the application is loaded, these settings are retrieved for your convenience.
- Select your trading strategy from a drop-down menu [The Chartist]
- Web Settings [The Chartist]
- Your login details for The Chartist's US Power Setups
- Trade Settings [The Chartist]
- Set paths for downloaded files
- Manage your trade settings for strategy such as leverage, position size, equity currency, etc.
- Report Settings [Optional Settings]
- Set your To and From email and its mail settings for report delivery
- Advanced [Optional Settings]
- Set maximum positions for Active Monitoring, etc
* **Active Monitoring** [Optional Settings] * Displays number of status of Active Monitoring and state of **Action**, number of **Max. Positions** and **Filled** positions * Automated Trader must stay connected to IB Gateway/TWS as long as the market is open for **Active Monitoring** to work
- One-Click Process
- One-Click processing for downloading, order management, placing orders and report generation
-
Orders, Log Diary and Log
- Order managerment details, list of day's orders and log diary of orders
- Process log to keep you up-to-date on the current process pipeline
* **Safety Checks & Intelligent Features** * [The Chartist](https://www.thechartist.com.au)'s trades are never processed more than once * Account capital is always retrieved based on the equity currency settings i.e. you could trade with your AUD equity on NASDAQ directly * Check for duplicate orders * BUY order will not be placed if an OPEN position already exists in your portfolio * SELL order will not placed if an OPEN position does not exist in your portfolio (No Short Selling) * Orders are double-checked, before being placed, to match your position-size * All BUY orders are placed **@ LMT** and all SELL orders are placed **@ MKT** * Your portfolio OPEN positions are matched with [The Chartist](https://www.thechartist.com.au)'s OPEN positions: * if your portfolio has an OPEN position that [The Chartist](https://www.thechartist.com.au) does not have, then a SELL order is generated to close that position * if your portfolio **does not** have an OPEN position that [The Chartist](https://www.thechartist.com.au) has, then **BUY ORDER IS NOT GENERATED** * All BUY orders are **Shuffled**. Therefore, if you hold a non-margin trading account your first few BUY orders will have a good mix of BUY orders from the entire list of The Chartist's BUY orders. [Read Note below] * **Active Monitoring**: * Useful for Margin account holders * Will perform **Active Monitoring** if **Max. Pos** is greater than **0** * **Active Monitoring** will Cancel unfilled BUY orders if number of filled orders reach your maximum imposed limited * **Yet to be implemented** _(Active Monitoring to place SELL orders if number of filled orders exceed your maximum imposed limit. The filled BUY orders that are to be replaced on the market as SELL orders are selected based on their time-stamps i.e. last filled orders are placed as SELL orders first.)_
Shuffled BUY Orders:
- For a non-margin account holder, you will only be allowed to place orders if you have enough capital. For example, with position size of $5K, and an account capital of $100K, you will be allowed to have 20 positions. Lets say, you already have 10 open positions, in which case, you are allowed to place 10 new BUY orders and anything more than 10 BUY orders will be cancelled or rendered inactive immediately.
- Of course, this poses a problem if you want to trade The Chartist's US HFT because everyday there will be many BUY orders. If The Chartist's BUY orders are placed as is, then considering the example above, only the first 10 BUY orders will be accepted and the rest will be rejected. Therefore you may not be getting the best deal in terms of stock-picks for those first 10 BUY orders.
- However, by Shuffling BUY orders, the first 10 BUY orders will now be composed of a good mix of stocks from entire list of The Chartist's BUY orders, giving you, the non-margin account holder, a better chance.
- Shuffling is enabled only for The Chartist's US HFT strategy.
YES - Go to Software Update
NO - Go to [Fresh Activation] (#fresh-activation)
Perform a fresh activation only if you have an unactivated license key. You will not be able to perform a fresh activation using an activated license key.
- You will download a .zip from the download area
- Extract the .zip file to your chosen location, a new folder titled TPT Automated Trader will be created. For example, I have extracted the .zip to *D:* drive
- Double click on TradingAutomation.exe
- Enter license key when prompted
Note:
- License keys are emailed to your email address when you downloaded the software.
- It is not mandatory to input the license key. However, Auto Trade facility will be only be activated for valid licenses. In case of invalid license key, you will have access to all other facility i.e. Interactive Brokers Gateway interface, but not Auto Trade facility. You will have the option of activating Auto Trade option using Activate Auto Trade button on the Connection tab.
Perform a software update if you have previously activated your license key.
Updating the software is a very simple procedure, you will have to replace your old version of TradingAutomation.exe with the newly downloaded version of TradingAutomation.exe. If you are unsure how to do this, then follow the steps given below:
- Go to the folder on your computer where TradingAutomation.exe file is located. For example: C:\my_software\TPT Automated Trader
- Delete TradingAutomation.exe file.
- Do not delete anything else, its necessary to retain folders utilities, etc
- You will download a .zip from the download area
- Extract the contents of the .zip file to a location on your computer that is other than the location of your current version of Automated Trader. For example: C:\downloads_UNZIPPED FILE CONTENTS_
- Copy the updated version of TradingAutomation.exe from C:\downloads_UNZIPPED FILE CONTENTS_ to your already existing folder (C:\my_software\TPT Automated Trader) that contains the old version of TradingAutomation.exe
- You have now updated the software!
Note:
- Updating the software will not delete or erase your data i.e. data within the utilities folder. However, if the software is being updated to a major release then all data except web login/passowrds, and report email/password/details will be retained. Web login/passwords and report email/password/details will be lost and needs to be reentered.
- Log in to your IB account via IB Gateway or Trader Workstation
- Go to Connection tab
- Click Connect (the default setting provided will work, unless IB TWS/Gateway API settings are different to default setting)
Note:
- Instructions on to how to enable connectivity on your IB Gateway or Trader Workstation
- IB Trader Workstation is a full-featured trading platform, it requires lots of memory and needs restart every 24 hours. Whereas IB Gateway is headless (no user-interface) connectivity to IB servers, it requires minimal memory and does not need restarts that often.
- To use with Automated Trader for The Chartist, I recommend IB Gateway because it is light-weight and does not need restarts
- Server and error logs provide a log of IB server requests and any error reports that IB Server reports or that arise due to connection with IB Server
- Go to Account tab
- Select account using Select Account drop-down menu
- Click Subscribe
- Go to Account ➡️ Portfolio tab or Open Positions tab
- Right-click on the open position that you intend to close
- Click Close Position
- Go to Order tab
- Click New Order
- A Order pop dialog opens up where you can enter your order details and click Send
- Changes to Extended Attributes, Volatility, Scale and IB Algo settings can be performed in this pop-up dialog
Note:
- For definition and description of each of the parameters in Basic Order, Extended Attributes, Volatility, Scale and IB Algo settings, please visit Interactive Brokers knowledge base
- Default settings should work fine for day orders
- Every time Apply is clicked, the settings are saved automatically for future use. These settings are retrieved whenever the application is loaded, for your convenience.
- GLOBAL CANCEL cancels all open orders in one go. However, a confirmation dialog will pop-up as a safety check.
- Go to Order ➡️ Live Orders tab
- Right click on the order that you wish to modify or cancel and select either Modify Order or Cancel Order
- Order dialog will pop-up with all details already populated for you to cross-check and Send
Note:
- Interactive Brokers provide execution report for the day (24 hours) and the Live Orders and Trade Log table is always in-sync with IB data i.e. they are delivered to this software as and when IB reports it.
Your selection of strategy in this setting will be used by the auto-trader for determining your choice of US Power Setups. This settings needs to be set once and is saved locally for future use.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab
- Select a strategy from the drop-down menu as shown in the figure below
The login and password provided here will be used to login to https://www.thechartist.com.au website.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab
- Click Web Settings
- You should enter your login and password that you use to access The Chartist's US Power Setups
- This data is stored locally on your computer using strong encryption for future use
The data provided in this setting will be used by auto-trader for determining your choice of position size, equity currency, leverage, etc. These settings need to be set once and are saved locally for future use.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab
- Click Trade Settings
- Make changes as required and click Apply
- Default settings work well
- Definition of terms:
- File Path: Location or a directory where you want the downloaded files to be saved. If left empty, the default is the folder the application is running in.
- Leverage: 1.0 (default). The leverage/margin you wish to use.
- Allocation: 100% (default). The percentage of capital you wish to auto-trade with. For example, if you have USD 100K, and set Allocation as 60%, then only USD 60K will be used for auto-trade
- Position Size: 6.5% (default). The percentage of allocated capital per position
- Currency (Equity): Currency to be used to determine liquidation equity or capital for trading
- Max. Amount: 2000000 (default). Any high number you wish, this is used to make sure no crazy orders are placed on the market
- Market Prefix: File prefix used by The Chartist for respective strategies
- The Chartist Sheet: Do not change these settings, these are supposed to be constants for each strategy
- Market: NASDAQ( default). The exchange this auto-trade will be working on
- Currency: USD (default). The currency this auto-trade will be utilising
- Sec. Type: STK (default). The security type this auto-trade will be trading
Note:
- Do not change settings under The Chartist Sheet, automated trader will not work if you change this setting
- Standard Contract and Order attributes for trading US Power Setups (both Original and HFT) is stored locally on your computer. They can be viewed by opening either utilities/usoriginalSet.xml or utilities/ushftSet.xml For US Original and US HFT , resectively, using a word-processor
- Every time Apply is clicked, the settings are saved for future use
The data provided here will be used for generating and saving reports, as well as emailing the report to your chosen email address.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab
- Click Report Settings
- Make changes as required and click Apply
- Definition of terms:
- From-Email Settings
- Email Address: An email address that you own from which you want to send email from
- Password: Password to the above email-address
- Custom Email Subject: A tag or an identifier that will be prefixed to the subject of the email for your identification at the other end. You can chose to leave this empty.
- Mail Settings: This setting will let your computer know how to send the email
- SMTP: SMTP address of your from-email address provider. The one shown in the figure below is from GMAIL
- Port: Port number settings for your from-email address provider. The one shown in the figure below is from GMAIL
- To-Email Settings
- To Email Address: An email address that you may/may not own to which you want the email with report attached to be sent to
- From-Email Settings
Note:
- To send an email, one needs an email address where the email originates (from-email) and a destination email (to-email)
- From-Email and To-Email could be the same email address
- Every time Apply is clicked, the settings are saved for future use
These settings will be used for Active Monitoring. You can set the maximum number of positions that you want filled and Active Monitoring will ensure that no more than maximum positions are filled.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab*
- Click Advanced
- Set Max. Positions and click Apply
IMPORTANT: Automated Trader must stay connected to IB Gateway/TWS as long as the market is open for Active Monitoring to work.
Note:
- When the application is first connected and subscribed to account information via IB Gateway, Active Monitoring will perform its monitoring and the status of Action will be changed to Taken.
- Active Monitoring is always ENABLED. To DISABLE Active Monitoring set Max. Positions to -1
- Set Max. Positions to 0 if you do not want software to perform active monitoring
This will download your chosen US Power Setup, check account information, process orders, manage orders, generate new orders to be placed, place orders to IB server, prepare a detailed report of this processing and email the report. During the execution of this process, Internet Explorer will open automatically to help you visualise the logging in to The Chartist and accessing US Power Setups actions. Internet Explorer will close by itself once the process is completed.
WARNING: DO NOT FORCIBLY CLOSE INTERNET EXPLORER WHILE THE PROCESS IS RUNNING.
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Settings tab
- Click One-Click Process
- And that's it!
Figure below presents the auto-trade in action:
Note:
- The figure above shows the detailed process log
Details of order management, daily orders and daily log (number of orders, file downloaded, etc.) will displayed here at the end of One-Click Process
To View details of order management and daily orders:
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Orders
To View details of daily logs:
- Go to Auto Trade ➡️ Log Diary
- Log Diary has a column for Equity to help you keep track of performance
The report that will generated and emailed would consist of:
- Summary: Summary of your account and placed orders
- Process Log: Process log of auto-trade
- Log Diary: Daily log of number of buy, sell, open positions, equity, comments and file used
- Orders: The Chartist orders for the day
- Portfolio: A snapshot of your portfolio at the time of processing
- API Error Logs: Error log from the IB server
Above is an example of the report-email format:
- Email Subject: The email has a subject that is composed of three parts. The first part is the name of the application that is sending this report, the second part is Custom Email Subject from your Report Settings and the third part is the status message of the process.
- Attachment: The report file is attached to the email
- Email Body: The email body consists of a generic message. However, if there were errors during the processing, those errors are listed in the body for your convenience.
Note:
- The reports are also saved on your local computer in the directory where this application resides under reports directory
- Reports are organised in MMYYYY folder with [StrategyName]_ddMMYYYY.xlsx format, for example report for US HFT on 19th February 2016 will be under reports/022016/ and the file name would be US_HFT_19022016.xlsx
Contact info@theportfoliotrader.com for assistance or if you have any queries.
All the computer programs and software are supplied with the explicit understanding that they are to be used only for purposes that the computer programs and software were built for, as stated by the provider. It is expressly prohibited to misuse the software by any individual, organisation, firm, limited liability company or private limited company.
Full terms and conditions of downloading this software will be displayed when you are about to download the software.
By downloading or using the programs, you acknowledge acceptance of the following DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY:DISCLAIMER OF WARRANTY
ALL THE COMPUTER PROGRAMS AND SOFTWARE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. WE MAKE NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, THAT THEY ARE FREE OF ERROR, OR ARE CONSISTENT WITH ANY PARTICULAR STANDARD OF MERCHANTABILITY, OR THAT THEY WILL MEET YOUR REQUIREMENTS FOR ANY PARTICULAR APPLICATION. THEY SHOULD NOT BE RELIED ON FOR SOLVING A PROBLEM WHOSE INCORRECT SOLUTION COULD RESULT IN INJURY TO A PERSON OR LOSS OF PROPERTY. IF YOU DO USE THEM IN SUCH A MANNER, IT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE FOR ACTUAL TRADING IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER DISCLAIM ALL LIABILITY FOR DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES RESULTING FROM YOUR USE OF THE PROGRAMS.
###Interactive Brokers API C# API is provided by Interactive Brokers. Please refer to Interactive Brokers for any licensing terms and conditions of their API.
DISCLAIMER: Automated Trader for The Chartist software is not endorsed by Interactive Brokers or any of its affiliates.
###The Chartist Subscription to The Chartist's US Power Setups is provided by The Chartist. Please refer to The Chartist for terms and conditions.
DISCLAIMER: Automated Trader for The Chartist software is not endorsed by The Chartist or any of its affiliates.
DISCLAIMER: Automated Trader for The Chartist is dependent upon the design and/or organisation of the The Chartist's website, delivery and format of trades as of today. In an event, where The Chartist's website and/or delivery and format of trades has been re-designed or re-organised, then auto-trade functionality may or may not work untill modifications have been made to this software to accomodate such changes.
THE RISK OF LOSS IN TRADING SECURITIES AND LEVERAGED INSTRUMENTS CAN BE SUBSTANTIAL. YOU SHOULD THEREFORE CAREFULLY CONSIDER YOUR OBJECTIVES, FINANCIAL SITUATION, NEEDS AND ANY OTHER PERSONAL CIRCUMSTANCES TO DETERMINE WHETHER SUCH TRADING IS SUITABLE FOR YOU.
HIGH LEVERAGE OF LEVERAGE IS OFTEN OBTAINABLE. YOU SHOULD BE AWARE THAT THE USE OF LEVERAGE CAN LEAD TO LARGE LOSSES AS WELL AS GAINS.
THIS BRIEF STATEMENT CANNOT DISCLOSE ALL OF THE RISKS AND OTHER SIGNIFICANT ASPECTS OF SECURITIES AND DERIVATIVES MARKETS. THEREFORE, YOU SHOULD CONSULT YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR OR ACCOUNTANT TO DETERMINE WHETHER TRADING IN SECURITES AND DERIVATIVES PRODUCTS IS APPROPRIATE FOR YOU IN LIGHT OF YOUR FINANCIAL CIRCUMSTANCES.
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