TickTrader: A real-time analysis and trading platform.

We're all too aware that the big merchant banks, stock trading companies and hedge funds use algorithmic, computerised trading to respond instantaneously to fluctuations in the market, but can this advantage be translated right down to the individual day trader - the kind of person who dabbles in the markets as a private individual?

When such a person approached us, we were keen to demonstrate our philosophy that information technology radically narrows the gap between the abilities of the big and the small players in any competitive market.

Our client was a NASDAQ day trader who had been working on a series of algorithms to track and predict stock price movements for some time. Although his calculations could successfully predict buy and sell points, he was working with such small movements and with such a small capital base, that he needed to be watching dozens of stock symbols at any one time in order to get the quantity of trading required to make a living.

He had tried physically to watch all of these symbols on a huge bank of computer screens, but the human mind is just not capable of such feats of concentration.

We replaced our client's physical watching of price movement charts with a simple application that analysed data on eighty-plus stocks coming in from NASDAQ in real time and automatically sent buy and sell instructions to his stockbroker when trigger conditions were met.

All of this, of course, freed up time for our client to further refine his trading logic, which is easily updated into our application as it develops.