Looking for a VBA programmer! No this is not a job request.

[LottaFun]

I am looking for a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) programmer that can wright some serious scripts in Excel 2010. Is there a pro that can do that in SA, someone that you can refer me to?

 

[biometrics]

HowMuch?

 

[Mr K]

Care to share more details?

I am looking for a VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) programmer that can wright some serious scripts in Excel 2010. Is there a pro that can do that in SA, someone that you can refer me to?

 

[LottaFun]

I have been testing a futures trading system. Now I want to automate it. The program I use for trading futures, Swordfish. Swordfish can only talk to Excel. I can place orders in Excel and Excel will place the order to buy or sell via Swordfish. The bottom line is that the conditions to buy or sell must be written in Excel based on trading indicators and certain trading conditions.

 

[DJ...]

I have been testing a futures trading system. Now I want to automate it. The program I use for trading futures, Swordfish. Swordfish can only talk to Excel. I can place orders in Excel and Excel will place the order to buy or sell via Swordfish. The bottom line is that the conditions to buy or sell must be written in Excel based on trading indicators and certain trading conditions.

You can teach yourself. Seriously.

Swordfish does this natively already. All you need to do is enable DDE (if you want pricing data) and link to Excel in the tools menu. If you do this properly it will open up a ready-made Excel workbook with an automated orders sheet. You can then start playing around with macros (i.e. teach yourself - altF11 to see the VBA menu and you can start to teach yourself what the codes are doing) - just ensure to not execute the orders while testing your macros - you can even automate paper-trades to test your trading strategy. Why is this better? Because you will without a shadow of a doubt need to make changes to your strategy and Excel GUI and you cannot rely on someone else to do this for you each time, and do it correctly - it becomes a real schlep. You also tend to become reliant on it, and you miss the depth you get from the Swordfish GUI. In addition, your strategy/algorithm is your IP.

It's a pity that Estuary still don't have a proper API for automation.

BTW, if you're going to have someone code VBA scripts for you to automate your trades, my suggestion (and no offence intended to those who have put their names forward) is to find someone with a decent trading background/understanding. The idiosyncrasies of trading need to be understood when you automate scripts managing, monitoring and executing potentially highly leveraged trades.

I also cannot stress enough how important it is to watch the depth (hopefully level 2 if you're actually trading) - don't become solely reliant on the algorithm. Personally I only used to use an algorithm to automate cover for large trades. The trading was all me though...

 

[LottaFun]

Thanks DJ. I have done the course and am learning but this is going to take me ages and I just don't have the will power to learn a new programming language. The manual I got on the course has 1009 pages! Ja right! Will take me forever to learn. I think I will rather pay someone to just do it and get it done.

So to all the VBA programmers, I need someone but as I need to show the person what I want done, this person must live in Cape Town.