RTX®: Extending the Investor/RT Platform

RTX: Extending the Investor/RT Platform

Extend the Investor/RT platform using a powerful suite of software development tools that we call RTX®. These tools empower Investor/RT users to program their own extensions using C++ with much of the RTX source code automatically generated by RTX itself. If you are not yet familiar with RTX, watch An Introduction to RTX. This short video covers the key concepts and demonstrates how quickly a charting indicator can be developed using the RTX tool set.

A key part of our RTX strategy is to attract software developers, consultants, and 3rd party commercial technical analysis vendors to the Investor/RT platform. Using RTX, 3rd party developers can write RTX extensions that compute and draw the results of those computations inside Investor/RT charts. Like the RTL Language, RTX extensions can implement custom indicators or trading signals that can be deployed directly into charts as indicators or signal markers, or referenced by other built-in indicators in the platform. Extensions are built by RTX using Visual Studio C++ and thus exhibit the high performance execution speed of built-in indicators. With the power of the C++ programming language at the heart of RTX, the possibilities for extending the platform are limitless.

RTX features a built-in code editor and a build system integrated with Visual Studio C++. Using the Investor/RT Object Manager, developers can edit RTX extension source code, click the Build button and instantly see the revised RTX extension operating in a chart.

RTX extensions operate on the historical array of bars in the Investor/RT chart and produce output arrays of data that can be displayed in the chart in various way (lines, histograms, bands, etc.). Custom drawing tools for lines, shapes and textual annotations are available in RTX. Access to market depth and buy/sell volume data per bar or price is accessible using the RTX developer API. RTX extensions also have access to the trading order execution system in Investor/RT thus facilitating the development of automatic trading systems that detect proprietary signals, submit trading orders, monitor position status and status of working orders and close out positions when exit signals fire.

Since the introduction of RTX, Linn Software has shifted new indicator development to RTX. This paradigm change has lead to further enhancement of RTX as our own development efforts have surfaced ways to further streamline and facilitate the RTX development process. For example, RTX features a user interface development tool used to create a prompting dialog for parameters (preferences) for the RTX extension. This tool has been extended to provide the ability to produce the robust customized preference dialogs often required by commercial software developers. See the side bar to the left for the full list of RTX-built indicators.

Three sample RTX extensions are pre-installed for Investor/RT users and include C++ source code to illustrate how RTX extensions can extend and make use of existing built-in indicators in the platform:

  • Stochastic (RTX)
  • Balance of Power (RTX)
  • SessionHiLoMid (RTX)