TradeStation

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TradeStation is a windows-based application, designed, sold and distributed by TradeStation Securities. It is technical analysis software that is used for analysing and trading the financial markets. It uses a built-in proprietary programming language named EasyLanguage.

TradeStation is a professional trading platform for financial market traders. It is used mainly by retail and relatively small investment operations as large financial institutions tend to have their own in-house solutions. It provides extensive functionality for receiving real-time data, displaying charts, and entering investment positions. Although it comes with a large number of pre-defined indicators, individuals can create and display their own using the built-in EasyLanguage programming language. TradeStation supports the development, testing and automation of all aspects of trading. Trading strategies can be back-tested and refined against historical data before being turned on and traded "live". TradeStation can either be used merely as a testing tool or can be used as a trading platform as well with TradeStation securities as the broker.

[edit] Add-ons

A large number of third-party developers sell add-on extensions for TradeStation. Since TradeStation is a development platform, a custom trading program can be developed called a trading system or trading strategy. If any trader has a potentially profitable strategy he would like to have developed, he can either write his own strategy in EasyLanguage or have his trading system developed by third party developers.

[edit] Software Versions

The current version of the software is version 8 - its real-time data only covers the US markets though there are plans to extend coverage to other regions. Version 5 was called TradeStation 2000i and could use a variety of different real-time data feeds so that although officially no longer supported, it is still used by traders wishing to work with real-time non-US data. Version 4 of TradeStation was 16 bit software and is now no longer used.