ttinkham 

I have been using Build Alpha now for multiple months and have no connection to the developer. I did encounter a few bugs which David already had solutions for when I contacted him. I would agree with previous posts that David is great with support. He normally responds within minutes to any email I send so my issues were resolved quickly. Like previous people have said, this software is a tool. If your expectation is to buy software that builds you the holy grail trading strategy, then don't buy it. I would say that it is a tool that can help you build profitable strategies that will work for a while with current markets. I would say that diversification is the key. My advice is to use BA to build 10 strategies that are currently profitable and trade them simultaneously. Do this in simulation for a few months first to make sure all is good!! Eventually as market conditions change you will have some strategies that become un-profitable. At that point you pull them out and add a few new ones. I also don't trade anything without a stop loss that is ordered with the broker on my strategies. I use TradeStation and always worry that my PC might crash, or my internet goes down when I am not home when the market goes against me, and my strategy is unable to exit the trade. I was new to easy language when I bought BA and the code it produced has helped me greatly to learn. The ways you can set Build Alpha up are unlimited so the results I get are totally based on the setup I use. I have also found that certain setups work better depending on what I am trading. It takes a GREAT DEAL of experimentation. I played with BA for months before even doing a simulation in TradeStation. Don't ask me the setups I use because I won't tell you!! At the end of the day this is a zero-sum game and we are all trading against each other, so I am out to take your money and not about to offer up how I do it. One other thing to note is that when I first bought BA, I had a fairly old and slow computer. After setup, BA tries thousands of indicators and parameters against marked history and this hammers on the computer CPU so it took forever to start getting good results. I ended up buying a new PC with the latest and fastest i9 processor with fast gaming RAM and it made a huge difference. Happy Trading

Good Morning ttinkham;

Thank you for the review.

Will anyone who has used Build Alpha give an update on their misadventures with it. Of particular interest are strategy summaries and the strategies that have survived Monte Carlo testing on a good profit factor >1.5. My assumption is that the inputs are not diverse enough to yield good strategies or are only applicable to daily or longer time frames...anyone using intraday time frames?

My real quest here is get more info from people who have used this software to produce strategies that people are actually using successfully in their trading. Is it software that is worth putting time and money into?

Dianoia 

I saw this thread, and thought I would share my thoughts on BA (I bought a license about a year ago) Let me first give you some background about myself… I have some 15 years of Wall Street trading experience. Predominately discretionary but more algo related trading as of lately. I have tried just about any platform there is out there, either for professionally or personal use. I think it’s fair to say that I have enough experience with what’s available to make a meaningful comparison between the vast number of products I have tried out. Also, it could be worth mentioning I rarely write reviews, and never unless I try something that I believe makes a difference. BA is basically an algo platform that takes a black box approach and then uses various built in tools to assist in the evaluation of the output, some of which are proprietary. There are a handful of platforms out there that would have comparable capabilities in my mind. Most of the “best” ones, in my experience, require a fair amount of coding however. BA is a product for the algo trader who is looking for the greatest amount of flexibility, combined with the least amount of coding. More specifically, some of the features include: - A very wide range of indicators (close to 4000 entry + 4000 exit) , such as calendar, time, paths, oscillators, volatility etc etc. - Built in EOD data for some 100 markets at no extra cost. - Lots of flexibility to tweak entries and exits (stop/loss, profit target, fitness functions, timing conditions etc). - Ability to use more than one market as input - Ability to import custom strategies and have BA evaluate them. - Great tools for output evaluation (MC analysis + a number of proprietary methods) - Compatible with MC, python etc Things that make BA stand out vs. the competition, in my mind, include: - Fully “automatic” interface. I am terrible coder and want to spend my time thinking about the markets/trading - BA allows me to do this. It is very easy to use, yet I do not feel limited. Obviously, if you are looking to customize your strategy, you have the ability to hook up BA to python for example. - User friendly and functional. The platform just works, period. Neither buggy nor ambiguous. Easy to reproduce results. Well organized GUI. Seamless work flow. - Lastly and most importantly, the support is second to none. The developer, Dave, is not only a nice guy to deal with, but also helpful and knowledgeable with meaningful trading experience under his belt. He listens to his customers and allows them to steer the direction of the platform. Overall Grade: 10/10

Hello Dianoia - I was reading your review on Build Alpha and you said you had tested many Auto Self Traders. So may I ask, I trade Futures on NinjaTrader and what are the best, most profitable and easy to install Auto Self Traders at the moment?

I appreciate your help and Thank You - Stevenxcel

Stevenxcel 

Hello Dianoia - I was reading your review on Build Alpha and you said you had tested many Auto Self Traders. So may I ask, I trade Futures on NinjaTrader and what are the best, most profitable and easy to install Auto Self Traders at the moment? I appreciate your help and Thank You - Stevenxcel

I will throw my two cents in here because I was dealing with the same question a few years ago.

The most profitable question I think is not relevant because the platforms we are looking at allow you to write your own strategies. These platforms are just tools to execute your own developed strategies on and not some magical platform that finds you good trades. So, the same strategy on the various platforms would give you the exact same results when trading if all your coding is correct on each.

I tried multiple platforms including NinjaTrader, Multicharts and TradeStation. TradeStation and MultiCharts both use EasyLanguage which I like a little better than C# in NinjaTrader also because it just seemed a little quicker for me to code in. Things may have changed since I tested but I ended up going with TradeStation because the TradeStation desktop connects directly to the TradeStation broker to execute trades. Other platforms required extra software/gateways to make the connection to the broker, which adds to the complexity and places for things to go wrong. So, for me the TradeStation setup was the simplest with less moving parts to make it all happen. The last reason for TradeStation was cost. If you open a TradeStation account, then you get TradeStation Desktop for free which is what I run the EasyLanguage code on for auto trading. The versions of MultiCharts and NinjaTrader that allowed auto trading had to be purchased. So, to me I just decided that it was not worth paying money for platforms that were going to be more complex to do the same thing I could do for free with TradeStation.

I could not find any other US based brokers at the time other than TradeStation that provided a desktop trading platform that allowed me to write auto trading scripts. There were some cloud-based brokers allowing custom scripts, but I really didn’t like the idea of that. If I develop a good script, then I don’t want some cloud-based broker to be able to steal what I have done and use it for themselves.

ttinkham 

I ended up going with TradeStation because the TradeStation desktop connects directly to the TradeStation broker to execute trades. Other platforms required extra software/gateways to make the connection to the broker, which adds to the complexity and places for things to go wrong.

@ttinkham,

Solid reasoning here, and I think your point about fewer moving parts is one of the most underrated factors in choosing an auto trading setup. When real money is on the line, simplicity matters.

One thing worth noting since you last evaluated: @NinjaTrader now has a fully integrated brokerage built in. So the extra gateway issue you ran into before is no longer a factor there. You connect directly to their brokerage the same way you do with TradeStation. That was a legitimate drawback when you tested, but the space has shifted on that front.

Your EasyLanguage preference is completely valid. For someone writing custom auto trading strategies, EasyLanguage gets the job done with less syntax overhead than C#. That said, if you ever want to compare execution costs, it is worth checking commission rates across brokers since those add up fast with auto trading.

On your IP protection concern with cloud platforms, that is a fair worry but worth separating into two things. Most reputable platforms have clear terms stating they do not own your code. The real risk with cloud is more about uptime and latency than theft. Many auto traders actually run their desktop platform on a VPS (a remote Windows server) for redundancy. If your home PC crashes or internet drops, the VPS keeps your strategy running. Something to consider as you scale up.

Bottom line, TradeStation is a solid choice for what you are doing. The best platform is the one where you can code, test, and execute reliably without fighting the tools.

-- Fi

"The best trading system is the one you actually trust enough to let run."