What is the best way to automate my trades?

Hey guys.
I’m a software developer and I would like to automate my tradings but I don’t know what is the best option.
I’m using Oanda so I was thinking about using their API.
On the other hand it would be nice if what I build could be usable with any broker.
Should I use MQL4?
I wish I could use a language I know already… like C#, Ruby or JavaScript.
What do you think?

Also, I would like to be able to simulate my tradings on past data to see if the strategy is good.
Do you know how I can do that?

Thanks!
Julien

Hello,

in my opinion you have 3 choices:

1- Use a C# based tool like NinjaTrade (free for developers), Multichart.NET (free for developer with a limit on symbols) and others; the code is not portable between the platforms but if you develop your software separating what is dependent from the platform from what is not dependent you can reach a good portability

2- You develop your own trading engine using the broker API and isolating the code
dependent from the API. It is an hard work because you have to write everything from scratch

3-Use an open source trading development environment (google search “open source trading platforms”, algo-trader etc)

My choice is #1

About backtesting:
1-in my opinion MT4 is not a good environment for backtesting
2- use only high quality data (it is very important and also expensive!!!)
3- use a tool like Ninja or Multichart

Bye