Online Brokerage With API?

palpatine asks: "I'm looking around for an Internet brokerage that offers a programming interface. Instead of using the Web and forms to make and track orders, I'd like to be able to have some sort of library with functions for making and tracking orders as well as getting real-time quotes, securely over the Internet. Does anyone know of such a place?" Is there such a beast?

Island?

[0xB]

Island [island.com] do what you want?

Are you fucking nuts?

[Profane Motherfucker]

My god man, are you absofuckinglutely positive that is what you want? You want unfuckingfettered access, secure, online, with an API? And for you personally? Can you be a little more fucking unrealistic?

Here's the fucking low down: you are asking for the ability to create your own person, on fucking line brokerage by hijacking another on fucking line brokerage. Straight fucking shit. You are asking for the ability to use a company's product in a manner that is totally fucking at odds with their ability to do this. To wit: Not fucking gonna happen.

No cocksucker worth his salt is going to let this shit fly, and the fucking slashdot audience is probably as far from the fucking authorita you want.

But hey, I could be a total ass rag about this. Look, my fucking four fucking letter word rant ain't fucking flamebait. I'm not going to jerk you off and pat you on the back. I'm giving it to you right on the motherfucking level.

Re:Are you fucking nuts?

[Diamon]

Wow, your intelligence is matched only by your couth. Great just what we need the Eddie Murphy of slashdot.

I take it you've never heard of using an API which supports authentication? Start an secure connection, here's my name, here's my password, ok well here's a token good only for this session now communicate to me using this token over the secure connection. Duh.

Re:Are you fucking nuts?

[Diamon]

Eddie Murphy - profanity = not funny

This guy - profanity = funny, but not informative.

Island, Redibook

[PoiBoy]

I know that Redibook and Island have Windows API's available for directly connecting to their networks.

The big question, though, is how much trading volume you do. To support that type of direct access to an ECN, you need an account with a clearing firm; and they probably have steep account minimums and capital requirements. I doubt if there is anything out there that will let you just open an account for $50,000 and place orders with your own programs. In short, sure it's possible, but it would probably be uneconomical unless you are running a full-time trading operation.

Re:Island, Redibook

[Judg3]

Where I used to work, Townsend Analytics [realtick.com] we have a product called RealTick, which (if you pay for it) does come with its own API you can use to alter the software and bend it to your needs. Its made for serious daytraders though, so unless you have the desire to trade and the money for the account don't bother. We tend to be "cutting edge" with online trading, I.E. our software is usually a little buggy, but it will always have the newest features. In fact it's considered the Coca-Cola of the trading industry, being one of the most widly recognized names. Give it a look see. And if you do call up and order, tell em Chucakles said go to hell. They know who I am ;)

yeah.... it will be called .NET

[mozkill]

yeah.... it will be called .NET

simple enough, eh? the concept of web services should take care of this nicely.

Reverse Engineering

[Dr. Bent]

A lot of online services use .ASP's and .JSP's to create dynamic content on their web pages. It would be easy (although time consuming) to reverse engineer their URL structure and use a HTML parsing library to parse the resulting web page, thereby creating your own API. Might make for a good open-source project.

Google me this...

[bihoy]

Lime Brokerage [limebrokerage.com] provides a system [limebrokerage.com] that provides what you are looking for. They even use all of the keywords you mention (Internet, security, api, programmable).

There Brokerage Service, however, seems to be geared more towards Order Placement through an ECN. Here are some screen shots [limebrokerage.com] of the GUI that is provided with the API.

Correction

[bihoy]

I see here that their Brokerage Service provides order placement with multiple Eachanges and ECN's.

Doh!

[bihoy]

I meant here [limebrokerage.com]!

Re:Interesting, that's the LimeWire gnutella peopl

[Zurk]

hmm..they have a crappy interface so they need to provide the API.
i'd love to have something like cybertraderpro (try the free demo - http://www.cybertrader.com/cybertrader/contact_sim .asp ) with an API.

silly commentators

[aminorex]

- There's really no difference between an API and
a web user-interface, except stability.

- Making a screen-scraper is a piss-poor OSS
project, because it would be broken most of the
time because of (1).

- .NET is only projected to get a maximum of 40%
penetration. The rest of the WebServices market
will be pure SOAP, mostly Java-backed.

If a brokerage made me an API, they'd get my
business in a flash.

nasdaq.com XML interface

[superid]

You can url encode stock symbols and get back XML from nasdaq via something like

http://quotes.nasdaq.com/quote.dll?mode=stock&pa ge =xml&symbol=ibm&symbol=gm

Re:nasdaq.com XML interface

[danielrose]

your link is 404 biatch (or i am drunk - take your pick)

Re:nasdaq.com XML interface

[superid]

ya, there's a cut&paste space in the url. I saw it after I posted, but I figured that it was pretty obvious :)

CastleOnline.Com Used to offer programmatic access

[Anonymous Coward]

Never traded with them. I trade through TerraNovaOnline.com. A realtick based brokerage (they also have some java thing). A previous poster mentioned RealTick as scriptable, but I have not tried this..

And if you are serious about trading, get a brokerage that allows trades through ARCA. This will allow you to place orders with trailing stops. Very handy.

A few options

[hawkfan]

On non-windows platforms you're pretty much limited to MyTrack Java SDK [pactconsulting.com] and Interactive Brokers [interactivebrokers.com] (Doesn't play nice with mozilla) for retail services.

MyTrack offers pretty good data although it can lag a good bit behind the marked (5-20 sec) and seems to be mostly unsupported.

IB's data is, well, you wouldn't want to trade off it alone. However the executions are great and their fee schedule is very competitive. Their Java TWS, which runs very well on Linux/UNIX, is somewhat programmable via either a socket interface or Java API.

I haven't worked with the MyTrack SDK for years so I can't comment on MyTrack's performance recently, but their executions were not comparable with other EDAT brokers and barely up to web broker standards when I used them. IB offers pretty good market coverage especially in commodities and options. Currently their API limits executions to their proprietary routing system, the client offers direct access routing to various exchanges. They also offer a much richer API to pro customers although their fees aren't as competitive in that area.

It's also worth mentioning that IB's platform is a bare-bones, no handholding, execution platform. If you want support and fancy tools go elsewhere but their executions and margin policies are pretty good (exchange min. on most contracts). When there is a problem however, you'll be happy to have a backup broker to hedge the positions you hold with IB. They require this in their customer agreement

See ibusers Yahoo group [yahoo.com] and EliteTrader Direct Access forum [elitetrader.com] for more information. I only mention options that are available on Linux/UNIX for retail brokers because thats all I've investigated for my own use. I may post a better summary when I recover from last night..

Re:A few options

[ag144]

The MyTrack API has improved quite a bit from the previous poster's experience, both in featureset and in execution times. Unless there's a network or host problem, you'll receive order executions that can be measured in mere milliseconds, and a real-time market data feed with no delays at all.

The API is fully event driven, not based on client polls, this is the real deal. You get intraday real-time data, full back-office connection for data queries and brokerage operations.

The brokerage operations have also improved quite a bit. The proprietary order routing is still available, but you now have extensive control over order routing decisions based on whatever personality you want to create.

One of the best brokerage features is the capability to operate with their brokerage back-end, but use a simulation account. All function calls behave the same, but you're operating with $100K in play money. This is a must-have to develop and test your code with no risk.

This is not simply a set of silly scripts to run in back of a website, this is an API to build your own application. Current API offerings cover C/C++, Java, and VB. Each of these have example code as well.

Honest opinion - I've got nothing to gain by having anyone sign up.

See the myTrack [mytrack.com] site for basic info including Track Data's [trackdata.com] other offerings. Go to the Pact Consulting [pactconsulting.com] site to download the API for free.

--

Allen Gray

http://agray.com