Dummies Guide to Auto Trading In Indian Stocks

This is a concise article explaining the resources and tools required for you to start auto-trading in Indian Stocks. It happens that many traders want to start auto-trading but having no idea on How or Where to get started.

The below steps will brief you on the commonly used method in India and the tools required to do Auto Trading In Indian Stocks.

Ingredients Required for Auto-Trading in India.

1 x Amibroker Technical Analysis Software. ( You can use The Free Version which is limited to 5 stocks or if you are rich, use the Paid Standard Edition which cost about 20k INR )

1 x Data-feed for Amibroker. ( Cheap data-feed for Amibroker,  Costs about 500 INR per Month )

1  x Help from an Amibroker AFL Developer to code your Strategy for Amibroker Software. ( Auto-Trading AFL coding service costs 7.5K Upwards)

1 x Auto Trader Software from Stock Developers Team. ( Monthly subscription cost about 1000 INR per Month )

1 x Zerodha Trading Account. ( Pay the Regular Brokerage charges on the orders executed )

Installation Procedure and Setup to Start Auto Trading in India.

  1. Install the Amibroker Technical Analysis Software to your PC from https://www.amibroker.com
  2. Search on google for an Amibroker Data-Feed Service Provider. After you purchase the data-feed, they normally help you connect the data-feed to your Amibroker through Team viewer.
  3. Now, Find a Amibroker Trading System developer like https://www.tradingcodes.in/ to code your Trading Strategy into Amibroker Formula Language.
  4. Download, Install and Configure the Auto Trading Software from http://stocksdeveloper.com/autotrader/. AutoTrader Setup Video Tutorial here.
  5. Log into you Kite Trading Account on Google Chrome.

How does Auto-Trading Work in the above setup?

The amibroker Platform performs the Live Scanning for your Trading Strategy during Market hours. When the Strategy Conditions are met, Amibroker passes the BUY / SELL order instructions to the Auto Trader Software.

The Auto-Trader Software acts as bridge / link and executes the orders to the exchange through your Kite Trading Account.

Watch this video to see how Auto-Trading Setup works in Live Market.

 

Now the Final Question, Is Auto-Trading Suitable for you or is it a waste of money?

1) From an individual retail trader’s point of view, auto-trading is only suited for profitable traders who have a unique strategy of their own and wants to now automate it for saving time. Auto-trading by itself, is not an avenue for exploring new methods of making money from the markets. Unless you have a unique strategy of your own, it is a waste of time and money jumping into auto-trading just because everyone seems to be talking about it. Do not expect to copy some strategy from youtube and make money on it. If you are already losing money trading the markets, auto trading is not going to make any difference, it can only help you accelerate it.

2) As of now, auto-trading as an autonomous system, needs constant supervision, continuous fine tuning and maintenance. So even though the process is called Auto-Trading, you need to be in front of the computer all the time. In case of web platform you need to manually authenticate the orders or for desktop platform you need to constantly supervise it, to make sure everything is working fine.

3) When it comes to individual retail traders trying to use auto trading methods. Due to the longer latency of the datafeed provided to retail segment, bids and asks with small quantity generated by HFT algos, backtested strategies on shorter intraday timeframe does not always yield the same results when deployed in live market using available auto-trading systems.