This book explains the broad topic of automated trading, starting with its mathematics and moving to its computation and execution. Readers will gain a unique insight into the mechanics and computational considerations taken in building a backtester, strategy optimizer, and fully functional trading platform.

Automated Trading with R provides automated traders with all the tools they need to trade algorithmically with their existing brokerage, from data management, to strategy optimization, to order execution, using free and publically available data. If your brokerage’s API is supported, the source code is plug-and-play.

The platform built in this book can serve as a complete replacement for commercially available platforms used by retail traders and small funds. Software components are strictly decoupled and easily scalable, providing opportunity to substitute any data source, trading algorithm, or brokerage. The book’s three objectives are:
• To provide a flexible alternative to common strategy automation frameworks, like Tradestation, Metatrader, and CQG, to small funds and retail traders.
• To offer an understanding the internal mechanisms of an automated trading system.
• To standardize discussion and notation of real-world strategy optimization problems.