How to Build a Custom Trading Bot for Automated Trading (2024)

A trading bot is a dedicated software product for automated financial transactions based on pre-defined rules. A trading bot can identify attractive opportunities and execute specific trades or close deals with minimal or no human interaction.

Trading bots provide key benefits such as speed and efficiency. They are essential for professional traders and specialized institutions to increase their revenues. Moreover, the current state of software development allows entrepreneurs to implement various strategies, including complex algorithms that analyze numerous indicators and market conditions.

Those interested can use trading bots when working on various financial markets, handling stocks, cryptocurrencies, commodities and other assets. In this article, we will take a closer look at automated trading and tell you how to create your own algorithmic trading bot.

Main Types of Trading Bots

Trend following bots. They are designed to detect a trend and make trades based on it. They may use various indicators to determine the trend.

1. Arbitrage bots. These bots take advantage of the price difference between different exchanges. If an asset is cheaper on one exchange than another, the bot can buy it on the cheaper exchange and sell it on the more expensive one, pocketing the difference (profiting from the bid-ask spread).
2. Order consolidation bots. Especially useful for large traders (or “whales”), these trading bots break up large orders into many smaller ones to prevent a single large trade from causing a dramatic price change.
3. Stop-loss/take-profit bots. These automatically set stop-loss and take-profit points to protect your investment.
4. Index crypto bots. They diversify your investments across the entire market, similar to an index fund. They typically invest in the top 10 or 20 cryptocurrencies by market cap.
5. Machine learning bots. These are more advanced bots that use machine learning algorithms to analyze market data and make trades. They can be trained over time to optimize trading strategies.
6. Portfolio automation bots. This type of trading bots help maintain a desired portfolio balance. For example, if you want to keep 50% of your investments in one asset and 50% in another, the bot will make trades as needed to maintain that balance.

How to Build a Custom Trading Bot for Automated Trading

Trading bot development requires a combination of technical expertise and financial market apprehension. The best way to tackle this challenge is to partner with an experienced technology team possessing the expertise you need.

That is what the process looks like step-by-step.

Step 1: Define your objectives

First, you have to decide what trading strategy your bot will implement and which asset exactly you want to trade. It can be shares, cryptocurrencies, forex, or anything else.

Strategies range from simple impulse tactics to more sophisticated predictions based on neural networks. You have to make sure that the trading strategy for your trading bot will suit the specifics of the asset class you have chosen.

Step 2. Choose the right technical partner

Deciding on the programming language for your bot implementation, using suitable libraries, connecting via API to trading platforms, and setting up the development environment — all these significant technical aspects require appropriate expertise and experience.

Step 3. Trading Bot Development & Testing

As I have written above, you should hire the appropriate technology team for this job. They will carry out the tasks of trading bot implementation and testing it for correct functionalities as follows:

• Data Fetching. Real-time data should be handled efficiently, considering potential delays or lags.
• Signal Generation. Be aware of overfitting. It’s easy to create a strategy that works perfectly on past data but fails in real time.
• Order Execution. Understand the types of orders your platform supports (e.g., limit, market, stop orders) and when it’s best to use each.
• Error Handling. Beyond just handling exceptions, implement mechanisms to alert you when they occur.
• Logging. Consider tools like ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) to visualize and monitor your bot’s operations.

Step 4. Backtest Your Strategy and Implement Risk Management

Implement simple verification and out-of-sample testing. Thus, you can verify how your strategy might work on invisible data and consider the possible impact caused by various factors.

Diversification can be an efficient means for algorithmic tools as well. Never put all eggs in one basket — implement mechanisms to stop trading in case of extreme events (e.g., unexpected disruptions).

Step 5. Regular Monitoring and Iterative Improvements

After you have deployed your trading bot, it is vital to monitor its operation and make adjustments to its work strategy if necessary. These procedures involve analyzing performance efficiency metrics (e.g., profit and loss, gain and drawdown percentage) and adjusting the app parameters accordingly.

Implement notification systems (e.g., SMS, emails) reporting unusual activity, like unexpected order size or highly frequent transactions in a short period of time.

What are the Benefits of Using Trading Bots?

If you combine automatic trading software tools with expert human evaluation, you can gain unique benefits and bring your business to a new level. Automated trading bots are a powerful tool helping traders gain a significant competitive edge in the market.

Below are just some of the benefits:

• Increased work efficiency due to 24/7 market data analysis and quick decisions on transaction execution.
• Minimized errors related to the human factor, for example, emotions in decision-making.
• Optimized strategies due to various rules testing and historical data analysis.
• Automated bots can simultaneously monitor several assets, trade them on multiple exchanges, and thus expand possibilities for multitasking and diversification.
• Automated purchase\sell processes without the need to monitor them manually allow traders to save time significantly.

Our team of experienced developers has all the necessary skills and technical expertise required to build efficient and functional trading bots to meet all your specific needs.

Our trading bot development services include:

• Custom bot development
• Integration with trading platforms
• Algorithm design and engineering
• Backtesting service.

If you are looking for a reliable technology partner to assist you in realizing your ideas, contact us and let us discuss the details.