These are the questions people actually send us before they hire us, with the answers we give. If yours is not here, write to us and ask it directly.
One thing to be clear about first. We build software. You bring the strategy. We do not design trading strategies, we do not sell ready-made systems, we do not recommend what to trade, and we never touch your money or your account. Your logic stays yours.
Yes. This is most of our work. You give us the rules — entry and exit conditions, position sizing, risk limits, which instruments, which timeframes. We turn them into working software. The strategy is yours before we start and yours after we finish.
Yes. In practice that means we write:
It also means handling the things that only show up once real money is moving. Historical candle data arrives with gaps, so we fill them. Feeds drop out, orders get partially filled, brokers throttle requests. Those cases go into the code, not into a list of things you have to watch for.
You also get a configurable .csv file, so you can set a ticker active or inactive yourself without anyone touching the code.
Yes. Each strategy runs as its own module inside one application, with its own parameters, instruments and risk settings, while sharing a single data feed and a single broker connection. You can switch one off without disturbing the others.
Yes. We build the backtest around your rules and your data rather than fitting your idea into someone else's tool. Where it matters, we build the backtest and the live system to share the same strategy code, so what you tested is what actually runs.
Yes. One system can place orders across several accounts, with position sizing and risk limits set per account rather than applied identically to all of them.
Yes, and this comes up often when your own clients sit with different brokers. We build a connection layer that speaks to each broker's API separately, so your strategy logic lives in one place and only the connection underneath changes.
Yes, and it is a sensible thing to ask for. Data and execution do not have to come from the same company. If your broker is right for execution but its data is unreliable, we take prices from a data provider you trust and keep orders flowing through the broker.
Yes. This is the largest kind of system we build. It usually combines a strategy engine, a connection layer for each broker or platform, and a web dashboard where you can see what is running, manage users or subscriptions, and display whatever information you choose to show.
One thing worth saying plainly: we build the dashboard, but what you publish on it, and to whom, is your decision and your regulatory responsibility. We can build a screen that displays data. What that data is, and whether you are permitted to show it to a particular audience, is yours to decide.
Forex, stocks, ETFs, futures, commodities and crypto. The real limit is not our software — it is what your broker and your data provider support. Tell us the instruments and the venues, and we will tell you honestly what is possible.
Yes. Crypto brings its own problems: markets never close, so there is no daily settling point; exchanges differ in how they handle order types and rate limits; and historical data quality varies a lot between venues. All of that is workable, but it is worth designing for from the start rather than discovering later.
Yes. Sourcing data is one thing; making it usable is another. We help with both — finding a provider that covers your instruments and history, then cleaning what arrives: filling gaps, aligning timestamps across sources, handling corporate actions, and removing bad ticks that would otherwise quietly ruin a backtest.
This is the question we most wish people asked earlier. Almost none of these show up while you are researching a strategy. All of them show up in live trading.
Data
Execution
Failure and recovery
Time
Backtest versus live
None of this means automation is fragile. It means the difference between something that works in testing and something that survives in production is mostly this list.
We are happy to advise on this, and we are talking about technology rather than investments. The things we look at are:
Tell us how your strategies behave — instruments, frequency, order types, how many accounts — and we will give you a straight technical opinion. We are not paid by any broker or platform to recommend them.
There is no price list, and any number we gave you before understanding your requirement would be invented.
Asking what custom trading software costs is a little like asking what a car costs. A Toyota and a BMW are both cars, both will get you where you are going, and they are not the same purchase. Until we know which one you are describing, any number would be meaningless.
So this is how it works:
If writing it all down is awkward, we are happy to do this on a call or a video meeting instead.
Between roughly ten days and several months, depending entirely on what is being built.
A straightforward system — one strategy, one broker, rules that are already clear — can be ready in about ten days. A larger system with several strategies, several brokers, a dashboard, or work that needs research before it can be written, runs into months.
You get the timeline together with the cost, after the questions step above.
You can own the source code outright, with a full licence. It is yours to keep and yours to modify, by us or by anyone else you choose. At that point it is your own product rather than something you depend on us for.
That option costs an additional 30% of the project cost. Tell us at the estimate stage and it is priced into the quote, so nothing has to be renegotiated later.
Every project includes one month of support after delivery. That covers edge cases and unusual situations that appear once the system is running against a live market — which, as the section above suggests, is generally when they do appear.
Anything genuinely outside the agreed scope is quoted separately, and only after we have discussed it with you first. No surprise invoices.
Yes. On a video call we will demonstrate systems we have built and show them working. Where we can, we will demo on the same broker or platform you are planning to use, so you are looking at something directly comparable rather than a general showcase.
We can also put you in touch with past clients for a reference.
Send it to us. If we cannot help, we will say so, and if we know someone better suited we will tell you that too. Ask us directly.
Trade Vectors LLP provides technology consulting, software development and API integration services only. We do not provide investment advice, portfolio management or trading recommendations, and we do not manage client funds. Any trading decision, and any result of it, remains entirely yours.
