Finding Technical Indicator Libraries for Trading and Backtesting
Summary
The document answers a developer looking for technical indicators and backtesting tools for trend-following strategies written in C# or Java. It points to TA-Lib as an open-source option with APIs for both languages, and mentions R resources such as the Empirical Finance task view and quantmod for time-series analysis and automated trading rules. It also names a C# indicator library and a .NET framework that supports backtesting and broker connections.
The examples show that indicator calculation libraries and full backtesting frameworks serve different needs: a library can supply calculations such as channels or oscillators, while a framework may also support simulation and brokerage APIs. The suggestions are community answers rather than a comparative evaluation, and the document gives no benchmarks or guidance on implementation quality. One answer discloses that its author created the library it recommends, so that endorsement should be read with that context.
Key ideas
- Technical indicator libraries can provide common calculations for strategy development in C# and Java.
- TA-Lib is presented as an open-source option with APIs in multiple programming languages.
- R packages are suggested for time-series analysis and automated trading rules.
- A backtesting framework may combine strategy simulation with broker API connections.
- The recommendations are not supported by comparative performance evidence.
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Full text
# Library of basic indicators # Library of basic indicators I am looking to start developing a trend following strategy and have been looking to do something in either C# or Java and wondered if there was a library or framework out there that would make backtesting a bit easier? I have looked at NinjaTrader(NT7) and it has some good API methods to allow you to run say a Donchian Channel/ATR on the stock data and use the values in your calculations of order entries and I wondered if there were similar libraries around that would do this in the programming world outside of an application like NT7? I know about things like quantlib but these are more mathematical based and I know these can be programmed in but I didn't want to reinvent the wheel if there was already a chunk of these indicator style things already written somewhere? Thanks in advance and I hope this question is within the guidelines for posting here. ## Answer by Matt Wolf (score 10) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/4182 Yes, there are. For pure technical indicator libraries I would first check out: http://www.ta-lib.org/ Its open source and they provide APIs for both C# and Java among others. Let me know if you look for commercial ones but this one is definitely the most comprehensive in terms of open source code. ## Answer by Julian Wergieluk (score 5) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/4190 You might have a look into the CRAN's "Empirical Finance" task view. It lists a whole bunch of R packages for time-series analysis and construction of automatic trading rules. Link: http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/Finance.html ## Answer by Ram Ahluwalia (score 4) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/4185 I believe the R library quantmod has some pre-packaged tools. ## Answer by DarthVegan (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/69445 The largest C# technical indicator library so far is at https://github.com/ooples/OoplesFinance.StockIndicators The full list of technical indicators is extremely large and they are all at https://ooples.github.io/OoplesFinance.StockIndicators/indicators There are over 350 unique technical indicators and it is by far the easiest to use. You can make an indicator out of any other indicator and you can customize the moving average to use for any indicator such as a RSI or a MACD. Full Disclosure: I'm the author of this open-source library ## Answer by mBardos (score 1) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/75619 I'm using Skender Stock Indicators (https://www.nuget.org/packages/Skender.Stock.Indicators). Built some back-tests for my experimental algorithms using 1 minute OLHC data downloaded from CryptoDataDownload (https://www.cryptodatadownload.com/data/gemini/). Note: free account is needed to download! ## Answer by peterg (score -2) https://quant.stackexchange.com/a/7212 RightEdge offers a C#/VB (.net) framework with backtesting that might have what you want: http://www.rightedgesystems.com/ It attaches to a number of broker APIs including the one offered by Interactive Brokers.
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