Automated trading is becoming increasingly popular these days. Most trading strategies can be implemented to be traded by a computer. There are many benefits to automating a trading strategy. The trading strategy can be backtested using historical data. This means the strategy is run on historical data and the performance of the strategy can be studied. We'll not cover backtesting in this book, but the trading system developed here can be modified to support backtesting.
Automated trading systems are, as the name suggests, automated systems for trading that are run on a computer. They often consist of several parts such as feed handlers, order management systems, and trading strategies. Typically, automated trading systems will represent a pipeline from market data to orders to be executed, and keep track of state and history. Rules are written to be executed in near real time for the market data entering the system. It's much like a regular control system, with...