Cool project! There used to be a really useful startup in this space, TradeWave, that would allow users to deploy their own custom code onto their platform and run it live against multiple exchanges. It also supported backtesting (testing your algorithm against historical data). Unfortunately, it seems like they were unable to find product market fit and since a few years ago their domain has been down.
I often wonder about the philosophy of making a trading bot. On one hand, you think that maybe by throwing enough brain power at the problem you might be able to crack the magical nut and print money from thin air. On the other hand, you know that millions of other incredibly talented and skilled people are also working on the same problem, and no one has really had much success such as to be notable.
On the third hand, it seems like common practice to use algorithms on Wall Street and in hedge funds, with many people claiming that the entire stock market is actually just 90%+ bot activity. So clearly it's possible to make money with bots, right? Otherwise nobody important would keep using them? I know that response time also matters with big firms spending billions of dollars just to be centimeters closer to the NYSE. But you can't just get rich from being faster than the next guy, can you? Don't you still have to be able to make all the right moves with the data coming in?
Maybe the secret trick is to become a hedge fund first, and then figure out how to make money later.
> On the other hand, you know that millions of other incredibly talented and skilled people are also working on the same problem, and no one has really had much success such as to be notable.
There have definitely been successes in this space, but they are always closed source within hedge funds and don’t usually offer up their algorithm for other people to use. Even internally in hedge funds they won’t share their algo trading strategies they have found, because if someone goes to another firm and replicates them then the advantage is lost. Usually these are based on understanding a specific signal that you can estimate a sectors value from.
As soon as others can use the algorithm any ability it has to beat the market is instantly lost.
> millions of other incredibly talented and skilled people are also working on the same problem, and no one has really had much success such as to be notable
I wonder how many strategies are profitable, but not at the scale that would be worthwhile for mid/large sized hedge funds to actually use. What I mean is that let's say I come up with some relatively naive strategy, that consistently delivers sub-1000/day profit. Can I just throw x1000 more monies at it and expect it to deliver 1M/day? I don't think these things scale linearly.
[+] [-] nexuist|4 years ago|reply
I often wonder about the philosophy of making a trading bot. On one hand, you think that maybe by throwing enough brain power at the problem you might be able to crack the magical nut and print money from thin air. On the other hand, you know that millions of other incredibly talented and skilled people are also working on the same problem, and no one has really had much success such as to be notable.
On the third hand, it seems like common practice to use algorithms on Wall Street and in hedge funds, with many people claiming that the entire stock market is actually just 90%+ bot activity. So clearly it's possible to make money with bots, right? Otherwise nobody important would keep using them? I know that response time also matters with big firms spending billions of dollars just to be centimeters closer to the NYSE. But you can't just get rich from being faster than the next guy, can you? Don't you still have to be able to make all the right moves with the data coming in?
Maybe the secret trick is to become a hedge fund first, and then figure out how to make money later.
[+] [-] Closi|4 years ago|reply
There have definitely been successes in this space, but they are always closed source within hedge funds and don’t usually offer up their algorithm for other people to use. Even internally in hedge funds they won’t share their algo trading strategies they have found, because if someone goes to another firm and replicates them then the advantage is lost. Usually these are based on understanding a specific signal that you can estimate a sectors value from.
As soon as others can use the algorithm any ability it has to beat the market is instantly lost.
[+] [-] rytis|4 years ago|reply
I wonder how many strategies are profitable, but not at the scale that would be worthwhile for mid/large sized hedge funds to actually use. What I mean is that let's say I come up with some relatively naive strategy, that consistently delivers sub-1000/day profit. Can I just throw x1000 more monies at it and expect it to deliver 1M/day? I don't think these things scale linearly.
[+] [-] narrationbox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ggvvfdde|4 years ago|reply