KSpreader - first look at KaiTrade's automated spreading

Here is a video showing KaiTrade's automated spreading working with CTS Cunningham (http://www.cunninghamllc.com/)

The product is in beta but packs useful features such as the PriceTracker to keep you spread in the market, and a range legging controls. As with most KaiTrade products you can control the entry and exit of spread automation from a variety of chart events and conditions as well as with the standard user interface.

We will be aggressively pricing the product to run with CTS using their modern API and will be introducing products that introduce conditions and complex event processing on the back of CTS data.

If you want to try the product contact us or simply download the trial versions.

Using docking windows with KaiTrade

Here is a short video that shows how to use KaiTrade docking windows layout - for those interested this is done using DotNetMagic

CQG Trading System integration

After a marathon development session KaiTrade now integrates with CQG's Trading Systems - this is cool because it means you can develop some trading ideas and back test them and when you are happy with the results bind them into the KaiTrade Strategy pad to control and manage execution.

This follows our theme of letting traders lever what they know, in this case you can setup and test trading rules and switch them on and off depending on your view of the market.

Contact us ( http://www.kaitrade.com/contact/contact.htm ) if you need information, we have a beta program for Trading System users and want your feedback.

Sneak-Peek at our pre-trade allocation plug-in

If you are interested in Pre-Trade allocation, have a look at this video thats shows an early view of our pre-trade allocation tool The allocator lets you conveniently split large orders over a set of accounts prior to trading them - here is the link:http://www.screencast.com/t/0ISwypG8kV

Your idea goes here - so you need to write an algo application

1 KaiTrade Api kit

If you need to write fast algorithms in C# or C++ let us do the heavy lifting of writing broker access and packing a user friendly application.

Using our plug-in API lets you fast track your trading idea in production by allowing you to concentrate your effort on the task in hand - the trading algorithm and reusing our technology to manger orders and provide access to a wide range of data. Typically, you will have the plumbing written in a matter of hours and then can devote the rest of your time on the application you are trying to develop.

You are using the same tools we use to develop our own applications such as the pairs trader, xxxlot ticket and custom work we do for clients, this means you benefit from using proven technology from day one. Going forward you are then able to run your application on different brokers and we look after updating the connections as external API's change.

1.1 Loader

The loader allows the KaiTrade accelerator to load you plug-in at run time, this means you can develop your plug-in in your own environment and then distribute it to your users for them to use with KaiTrade.

You need to request an ID from us for your plug-in, this enables us to add the permissioning into our provisioning system- critically this gives you a way to control who has access to your plug-in. When the user is provisioned to use your plug-in it appears in their toolbar, they then click on it to use your functions in a seemless way.

1.2 Interfaces

We provide a rich set of interfaces that allow you to:

· Route and manage orders

· Subscribe and Publish real time price data

· Subscribe and publish general purpose data (e.g. trade signals, status updates)

· Access historic bar data, studies and signals/conditions

· Use our and 3rd party order management/execution algorithms

· Use price based algorithms

· Access a variety of data (Accounts, trade venue)

· Access product data

· Access our drivers(CQG, TT, CTS, FIX Protocol and others)

· Interact with Excel

These interfaces enable the developer to concentrate on what they want the their system to do rather than the plumbing to connect to brokers and exchanges, further more their code will then run on multiple brokers.

There is documentation describing the interfaces here or paste this: http://www.kaitrade.com/KTA/API/doc/

1.3 Factory

When your plug-in is loaded into the KaiTrade accelerator it is given the reference of the KaiTrade object factory.

The factory allows you to get instances of all of the trade and system objects in KaiTrade at run time, the factory method eliminated the need for you application to have references to our system components and thus lets you work independently of us.

2 User Plug-In

The user plug-in is essentially an assembly that has a class that implements our plug-in interface, generally together with a user control (user interface). The developer has complete freedom in terms of what the then put into the plugin, however they generally make use of our interfaces and factory to lever the fucntions we provide with their own code.

This way the developer concentrates on the algorithm or project their user wants and uses the work we have already done to provide access to data and route orders.

3 Sample Code

We provide a sample project that build a simple plug-In

Gray-Box trading systems

There has been a divide between discretionary trading where the trader analyzes data, trades and manages orders in terms of profit and risk manually compared with system trading, where a set of programmed rules (developed and back-tested) drive this process with little or no trader intervention. Recently, systems have evolved that allow a cross-over between system and discretionary trading to produce a hybrid of the two, so the trader gets the best of both worlds.

A gray-box or hybrid trading system provides the trader with automation for the mechanical parts of trading while allowing them to use their judgment (discretion) about trading decisions - so the system seeks to inform the trader of opportunities, and manages the trading of products, yet leaves the decision to use the recommendations to the trader. A key advantage to this nimble approach is that it levers the traders knowledge to the full so that they can react quickly to changing market conditions and maximize return on effective strategies.

This contrasts with a black-box system, which is fully automated (along with the associated high cost and long lead time to profit) and existing manual "click trade" order entry systems that have little or no automation.

In most cases, a gray-box system is implemented by providing the trader with a system, such as the KaiTrade Accelerator, that sits side-by-side with existing trade entry and charting packages to provide some level of automation and control - see the diagram below:

Some programming-savvy traders have also written their own systems using Excel and RTD provided by system vendors such as TT and Pats.

We are seeing increased demand from discretionary traders, who are now using powerful charting and modeling like CQG to generate automated signals to enter and exit trading scenarios.

The trader then uses the KaiTrade StrategyPad to connect and link the signals generated from CQG to strategies that the trader has set up. The trader can then choose which strategies to use depending on their view of the market conditions.The strategies can trade a range of products (futures, options, stocks), spreads and other multi-legs (synthetic products) the trader may set up. Crucially, they offer sophisticated order management, for example controlling risk using trailing stops and locking in profits.

The system evolves as traders identify the best patterns of trading that suit the markets they are interested in. They can apply these to a range of products automatically and free up time to find new markets and methods.

KaiTrade provides all the tools needed to bridge the gaps in existing systems, and let traders and organization start implementing gray-box trading quickly. Our mix of solid engineering and trading experience lets us deliver on our commitment to enable traders to "Trade Better" today and in the future.

For more information click here or paste http://www.kaitrade.com/products/products.htm

KaiTrade supports multi-leg products

KaiTrade now lets you create and trade your own multi-leg products. This is great news for people wanting to trade:

• Inter-commodity spreads, for example, crush spread (soybean oil vs. soybean meal)
• Stock Index futures
• TED, notes over bonds spreads
• Yield curve arbitrage
• Crack spreads, for example, the 3:2:1 ratio trading oil, gasoline and distillate according to this ratio
• Butterfiles and condors
• Basis trades

Essentially, we have provided an easy tool that lets you create a product within KaiTrade and then add existing products to it. You can specify the quantity/ratio of each added product and determine how it will trade.

The system can generate the implied price of the product based on the real-time data of the legs. and you can then trade the product from the standard order ticket, the StrategyPad (for example triggered from CQG conditions) and from Excel.

We have a custom pairs trading plugin in test - this levers the multi-leg functions in a convenient way for pairs traders, and will be released in the next month.

You can get more information from our website here and we have a short video demonstrating the new capability here http://www.screencast.com/t/ahyd11HornM