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Photon can run by itself, however, most of its utility comes from connecting to other components in the Marketcetera Automated Trading Platform stack, like the Order Deploy Anywhere Routing System Engine and one or more Strategy AgentsEngines. Upon start, Photon prompts you to log in to an Order Routing Systemthe Deploy Anywhere Routing Engine (DARE) in the cloud. This system is available for you to use without charge for your evaluation of Marketcetera.
The default credentials for the Order Routing System are admin/admin.DARE are user/password. You share this user with all other evaluators. When you install your own DARE appliance later, you can set up your own users.
Once you've entered the credentials to connect to DAREOnce you've entered the credentials to connect to the Order Routing System, you can tell if Photon has successfully connected by the status icons at the bottom. The icons will change from
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(the left light is for the connection to the Order Routing SystemDARE, the right light is for the connection to a market data adapterthe Market Data Nexus, more on that later)
After connecting, some views that require a connection to the Order Routing System DARE are populated, like the Open Orders View and the Positions View. More on these and other views later.
By default, Photon is configured to connect to an Order Routing System running on the same hostDARE appliance running in the cloud. However, if you 've installed your Order Routing System on another hosthave licensed a DARE appliance for your own data center, you can configure Photon to connect to that host instead. Select Cancel from the login dialog and then Edit->Preferences. Select Connections in the left pane.
You can enter a new IP address (in place of 127dare.0marketcetera.0.1com) for the IP address of your Order Routing SystemDARE appliance. Select OK and then File->Reconnect Server to resume the login process. There is also a menubar icon for Reconnect Server, for your convenience. If you are already connected to the server when you select Reconnect Server, your current connection will be closed and a new connection established. This is harmless, though there may be a small delay depending on the amount of trading activity that's occurred today as Photon downloads today's activity from the Order Routing Systemconnection will be closed and a new connection established. This is harmless, though there may be a small delay depending on the amount of trading activity that's occurred today as Photon downloads today's activity from DARE.
In addition to the DARE Server connection, there is also a connection to the Market Data Nexus. By default, Photon is expecting a Market Data Nexus installation on your local host. The Strategy Engine installation by default is configured to also provide a Market Data Nexus instance. The default port is 8998 for the Market Data Nexus.
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Photon provides market data market data via the Market Data Nexus for display and also for consumption by running strategies. More on strategies later, for now, let's focus on P&L calculation. Let's take a look at the display of market data. The Marketcetera Automated Trading Platform divides market data into content types:
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The FIX Message Views are based on FIX message history provided by the Order Routing SystemDARE. Each FIX message received by the Order Routing System DARE from brokers and exchanges contributes to the FIX message history. That can be a lot of messages! The Marketcetera Automated Trading System has the ability to filter the FIX message history to just those orders from the current trading session. By default, this feature is enabled and the session start time is set to 00:00:00, local time. To disable this feature (download all message history) or change the session start time, go to Edit->Preferences->Trading History:
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The Strategy Views present information related to the creation and execution of strategies. Strategies can be executed within Photon (with some limitations) or in a Strategy Agent (without restriction). The preferred approach is to execute strategies of strategies. Strategies can be executed in a Strategy AgentEngine. There is a Strategy Perspective that opens the standard set of Strategy Views. Strategy Views can be opened in any other perspective as desired by selecting the view from Window->Open View->Other.
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The Strategy Engines View allows you to manage connections to external Strategy AgentsEngines. A Strategy Engine is the view of a Strategy Agent from Photon. In addition to external Strategy Engines, Photon features an Embedded Engine . The Embedded Engine can run Ruby strategies, but not Java strategies. A Strategy Agent can run both Java and Ruby strategies. The Strategy Engines View displays all known Strategy Engines. Enabled Engines are connected and live. Disabled Engines are not currently connected.
To create a new Strategy Engine, select the "create" icon from the Strategy Engines View.
After creating the Strategy AgentEngines, select it in the Strategy Engines View and connect to it.
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After you connect to the Strategy AgentEngine, you can deploy, undeploy, start, and stop strategies running on that Strategy AgentEngine. To deploy a strategy to a Strategy AgentEngine, select the strategy in the Project Explorer View. You can deploy one of the sample strategies to start with. Later on, you can create your own.
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To deploy a strategy, give the strategy a unique Instance Name. You can deploy several versions of the strategy on the same Strategy AgentEngine, but each strategy must have a unique Instance Name. Choose whether the strategy should route its orders to the server or not. If you choose not to route orders to the server, when you run the strategy, it will create orders but these orders will not be sent. You can use this as a verification step before committing the strategy to running in production. Choose the engine to which to deploy the strategy.
After the strategy is deployed, you can start, stop, and undeploy it from the Strategy Engines View.
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