Essentially a trading system is a set of rules or logic that signals what instrument to buy/sell, when to buy/sell and how much to buy/sell. It is as simple as that; think of a trading system as a systematic way of buying or selling financial instruments.

I have a passion for building and testing trading systems. I can tell you first hand that my most profitable trading system was the simplest to write. That being said you will not find specifics on my personal strategy on this website, or anywhere else for that matter. Below I have provided a series of links on trading system design and some reviews on software I use.

• Rethinking Automated Trading System Design.
• Numerical Computing Environments for Traders.
• Importing Stock Data From Yahoo Using Python
• Setting up the perfect Python Development Environment.
• Creating your own watch list using Excel and eSignal.
• Removing Weekends from time-series data.
• Book Review: Quantitative Trading How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business by Ernest Chan
• Building an automated currency trading system from scratch
• Building an Automated FOREX System: Expert Advisors & Indicators
• Designing a Simple Strategy and Introduction to Pseudo Code
• Building an Automated FOREX System: Writing the Pseudo Code

Caveat Emptor – Buyer Beware

Every man and their dog is spruiking a trading system these days. With all these super-duper trading systems developed by former NASA engineers and software based robots you would think it is easy to make money. Personally I am yet to find a commercial trading system that I would invest my own money with.

Steps to Take to Avoid Getting Conned

1. Don’t believe the marketing.
2. Are the advertised results independently audited?
3. If the system is so good why are they selling it?
4. Investigate the LLC selling the system.
5. Be wary of positive reviews from affiliates.
6. Make use of regulatory authority’s websites.