Trading system development products have been around for many years.  As with most things, the original products had a long way to go.  Technical indicators, sample trading systems and real-time data features were in short supply.  However, over the last five years, most trading system development products have become quite mature and feature rich.  Even with that being true, there are still some major shortcomings in the current implementations.  RightEdge was created to give a fresh perspective on the current product market and address these ruts.  Each major problem is outlined below.

You CAN Take It With You

Over the course of months or even years, people switch tool sets and infrastructure.  You may change an internet service provider, upgrade your computer and maybe even upgrade your broker!  The problem is, your broker offers your existing trading system platform software and it would cost a significant amount of time, money or both to switch brokers since the software is tied to said broker.  Even though the broker down the street offers twice as many services at half the price, the cost to switch is significant.

RightEdge is broker independent.  Our pluggable architecture will allow you to interface with any broker that will allow a third party to access their trading desk.  If your broker is not on our list of supported brokers, please submit a request to our development staff.

RightEdge is data independent.  This same architecture allows us to get data from any source with a published protocol.

Switch brokers or data providers and never miss a beat!

Roll Your Own

A pluggable architecture was a primary focus in the design of the RightEdge product.  The technical indicators, data storage, data retrieval, order management, and even trading system risk assessment calculations are all plugins.  This means that all core facets of the product can be extended.  In fact, we eat our own dog food here, the plugins provided as part of the standard package are built with the very same interfaces that are provided to the end user.  These are not an afterthought like most products.

Real Tools, Real Technology

There are three very major shortcomings in most trading system development platforms.

1. Script/Interpreted Languages

   Most platforms utilize a proprietary language to assemble systems.  While they may think they're making it easier, it forces anyone who knows anything to have to relearn their proprietary language.  Also, resources available to learn that language are typically limited to their help file.  What's more, you are at the mercy of the performance of their interpreter.  Even the best interpreter does not outperform a compiler.

   RightEdge uses real, compiled languages to build trading systems!  Visual Basic.NET and C# are standard languages.  Not only will you inherit the benefit of some of the best compilers in existence, you will also inherit the seemingly limitless resources that these languages possess.  You don't have to count on our help file to learn the language.  Buy a book, take a course at your local college, or even receive personal training from certified professionals!

   Even better, you may already know these popular languages and can hit the ground running today!

2. Little or No Extensibility

   As mentioned above, RightEdge was designed to maximize extensibility.  However, it's highly unlikely that the product addresses all of your needs to build a complete system.  RightEdge provides the ultimate extensibility as it works with any .NET library in existence.  Much like you would purchase a library to handle a specific requirement and build it against your application, RightEdge supports external library references.

3. Poor Design and Development Tools

   It has been a primary goal to build the best development environment possible.  Admittedly, since we do not specialize in development tools, companies that do obviously do a much better job.  If you require an industrial strength development environment, RightEdge can accommodate.  Build your system in a real development environment, then bring your code back into RightEdge for testing and trade execution.  Don't get hamstrung with proprietary development tools that don't make the cut.

Industrial Strength Storage

It's your data, access it however you'd like!  With RightEdge, bar or tick data is not stored in a proprietary format.  In fact, it's not stored in any predefined format.  No one knows how you like your data stored better than you!  Out of the box, RightEdge will support storing data to a high performance binary data store or an Access database.  SQL lovers will enjoy the flexibility of a query language they know and the ability to export the data to any format they'd like.  For true power houses, SQL Server is supported as well.  Of course, the data storage architecture is completely extensible, so with a quick plugin, you can store data in any way you'd like!

Protect Your Investment

Interpreted and proprietary languages come bearing the ultimate cost, that being full exposure of your intellectual property.  In order for the trading system to build, the trading platform software must possess the source code in its entirety.  This is obviously a huge concern to those who invest significant time and money to developing this intellectual property.  RightEdge systems build into a compiled library and for further protection, the libraries are compatible with commercial grade obfuscators to keep prying eyes away from your blueprints.  Don't give away the farm!

Fixed Cost, No Rules

You don't have to be an "active" trader or conform to your broker's rules to get access to a trading platform.  There is no monthly charge, no minimum balance and no minimum trades.  RightEdge is completely service independent and does not require you to spend any additional funds beyond purchasing the product license.  Of course, your data provider and broker fees are separate.