Custom Trading Execution Tools

The Problem Nobody Talks About

Here is something most people outside the trading world do not realise: the strategy is the easy part. Every serious trader has a strategy. What they do not have is the tooling to execute it consistently, at speed, without human error creeping in at 2am when the Asian markets open.

So what do they do? They go shopping for a developer. Or a team of developers. They sit through discovery calls, write requirements documents nobody reads properly, wait 6-8 weeks for a first build, then spend another month on revisions because “that is not quite what I meant.”

Meanwhile, the market window they were building for has come and gone.

What Traditional Development Looks Like

The client had been through this cycle twice already. Two different agencies, two incomplete builds, and a combined bill that would make your eyes water. The first team built something generic that almost worked. The second team over-engineered it into something that technically worked but was impossible to modify when the strategy needed tweaking.

Both times, the timeline was measured in months. Both times, the budget spiralled past the original quote. Both times, the trader ended up manually executing trades anyway because the tools were not ready.

What AI Changes

When this project landed on my desk, the first thing I did was sit down with the trader and have them walk me through their exact logic. Not a requirements document. Not a feature list. The actual decision tree they run in their head when they are executing.

That conversation took about two hours. By the end of it, I had a complete picture of the execution logic, the edge cases, the fail-safes, and the reporting they needed to review performance.

Then I built it. Three days. Not three sprints. Not three phases. Three actual days.

AI does not need to context-switch between projects. It does not need to ramp up on trading terminology. It does not forget what you said in the last meeting. The entire system — execution logic, risk parameters, position management, real-time monitoring — was built as a cohesive unit because there was no hand-off between people who each only understood part of the picture.

The Result

The trader went from manually executing strategies with spreadsheet tracking to a fully automated system that matched their exact logic. Not an approximation. Not “close enough.” Their precise rules, their risk tolerance, their position sizing — all encoded and executing without intervention.

Three days of build time. Previous agencies quoted 6-8 weeks. And because every piece of logic was custom, there was no “we will need to customise this off-the-shelf solution” conversation. It was built from scratch around their brain.

The kicker? When they needed to adjust their strategy parameters two weeks later, the modification took four hours. Not another round of agency negotiations. Four hours.

Why This Matters for Your Business

You do not need to be a trader to recognise this pattern. If you have domain expertise that requires custom tooling — and every serious business eventually does — you have probably been told it will take months and cost a fortune.

That was true. It is not anymore.