MetaQuotes proved that there is healthy interest for automated trading among retail traders with its Expert Advisor (EA) product. Following that adoption, we are now seeing an influx of sophisticated algorithmic trading platforms arriving for the retail market. Products include drag and drop builders that don’t require prior programming knowledge, to high end products that focus on low latency development and deployment. Coming from the latter group is Seer Trading, is a platform for building, back testing, optimizing, and deploying automated trading strategies. The firm presented last year at the Elevator Pitch Session during the Forex Magnates London Summit.
With usage from professional traders and financial institutions, Seer has now begun to shift its focus on the retail forex market, with the launch of its ‘next generation platform’. With the re-launch, the platform is available to retail traders through FXCM and InteractiveBrokers accounts. In addition, the company now includes Ilan Azbel, CEO of Autochartist as an investor in the firm.
According to Seer, they believe that the edge their platform has on existing products in the retail field is that it was “designed and built from the ground up for the sole purpose of trading algorithm development and subsequent deployment”. They added “by developing a new system as opposed to bolting on extensions to legacy software, the Seer Trading solution can now address a myriad of challenges such as this complex - but critical - diversification issue.” As such, the platform will be targeted towards EA developers, independent and institutional algorithmic traders, and systematic money managers.
Explaining his interest in the product and why he invested, Azbel told Forex Magnates "I invested seer trading systems because I think the FX Market is ready for something more sophistiacted. With the retail penetration Autochartist has in the FX space, I think this is a good fit."
Also commenting on the news, Jeremy White, Founder of Seer Trading stated in the firm’s official release that “Over the last 15 years we have seen nothing short of a fundamental shift in the trading culture. Copy trading, Algo Trading and the ability for anyone to access and process huge volumes of statistical data have been added to the trading lexicon, but comprehensive support for this has been sorely lacking. For the first time, traders across the spectrum now have the ability to access an appropriate technology to assist with their analysis and development of trading strategies.”
It will be interesting to see how the product is received by developers. While there is room for new entrants in the retail systematic trading space, much of the market is dominated by the sale of easy to deploy EAs. As such, there are niche users of competing products who are developing their own strategies on these platforms. However, redistribution of strategies remains a drop in the bucket when compared to EAs. As such, more than just great platforms, an easy to use marketplace is also necessary to create a foothold in the retail market. But that appears to slowly be taking place as platforms with an open structure to create third-party marketplaces are becoming the norm.
