Brady’s PowerDesk Edge Gives Traders Python Power
Brady’s PowerDesk solution is designed as a comprehensive trader’s cockpit for trading in intraday and day ahead power markets providing a holistic view of positions and market activity, according to the company’s website. A key component of the PowerDesk solution suite is PowerDesk Edge – Brady’s algo trading platform. Recently, I got an update from Chris Regan, Managing Director, Short-Term Power at Brady, and Navesh Kumar, Lead Data Scientist – the brains behind Brady’s pioneering algorithmic energy trading research and development initiative.
Brady’s website describes PowerDesk Edge as a flexible toolkit of algo libraries designed with risk management at its core and as Navesh explained, it is designed to support algo traders ranging from those who are keen to devise their own algos to those who simply want to use pre-configured algo’s for trading. As Chris told me, trading and traders are changing, and the younger data-driven traders want to use a pythonic approach and that requires a platform, not just a configurable dashboard. “While others are providing algorithms for trading, Brady has focused on a new paradigm and provides Edge, a true trading platform that provides them the ability to devise, back test and deploy their own trading strategies in algo form,” he told me. “The platform wasn’t developed in isolation but involved doing deep data science research into problems like slippage, for example.” He also told me that Brady already has its first customer for Edge and is in serious discussions with many other potential customers.
Navesh gave me a look inside PowerDesk Edge to show me how it works. This involves a lot of things like connecting to an exchange, setting up the context and so on. It also includes slippage management and latency calculations, he told me. Python is used, meaning that traders with Python skills can utilize them to the fullest with this solution. In fact, Brady has taken a very careful approach to building PowerDesk Edge that includes some truly innovative features and ideas. The result is that more sophisticated users can use it to devise, backtest, normalize, and deploy trading strategies in automated algo form. Less sophisticated users can utilize the default template provided. From what I took away from the session, much of the power is in the back testing rigor and ability to test and fine tune different trading strategies. Indeed, Brady now offers back testing as a service as well.
Brady, in collaboration with Reactive Technologies, recently published a white paper utilizing a standard dataset to demonstrate PowerDesk Edge’s power and approach, I was told. “Traders with a Python background who see this solution are enthusiastic,” Chris said. “They are enabled to deploy sophisticated mathematical architecture to make a trading decision using PowerDesk Edge.” Meanwhile, Brady says it will be continuously evolving the product and that it feels it has shifted the paradigm differentiating PowerDesk Edge from other solutions on the market.
