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Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market
- chillydawg 10y agoRemember, the stock market is just gambling. Fancy tools and triggers just let you kid yourself you know what you're doing. Unless you do it as a full time job, you probably should not ever directly trade individual stocks. What do you know that the pros do not?
- Netcob 10y agoMaybe not us individuals, but I bet if trigger becomes really popular to the point where its rules actually have an impact on the market, then access to that rule database might be worth quite a lot.
- rachelita 10y agoAt the end of the day, most individual investors feel a relationship with the brands and companies they love, and often times they express their support by buying shares. For any individual investor who owns single stock or likes do it themselves, there are very little tools to help you invest responsibly. Trigger is trying to take the emotion out of investing, as the pros do. As a former trader, this is the most important lesson when investing, to set rules, levels and events ahead of time to make your actions more disciplined. We encourage investors to trade via triggers, instead of being driven by fear or greed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- tyrust 10y ago>We encourage investors to trade via triggers, instead of being driven by fear or greed. These triggers could be considered a proxy for fear ("IF JPM dividend decreases THEN SELL JPM") and greed ("IF Fed raises interest rates THEN BUY VXX"). These codify and act on what a user expects their emotions to be.
- gnaritas 10y ago> Remember, the stock market is just gambling. That's quite a claim, where's the evidence to back it? There are funds[1] that have consistently beat the market every year for decades, their very existence disproves the gambling hypothesis. > What do you know that the pros do not? You're not playing the same game as the pro's so it doesn't really matter. Hedge fund/mutual fund managers are playing with millions/billions of dollars which requires massive liquidity and carefully planned entries and exits over a period of time in order to not move the price too much; that's a completely different game than what a retail investor plays and that means retail investors can chase profits in areas too small for the big guys to play in. In other words, you don't have to beat the big guys, you're not fishing in the same pond nor playing the same game. Retail investors can enter and exit trades instantly without having to worry about liquidity or slippage, two concerns that dominate the big guys strategies. When you're small, you're nimble in a way the big guys can't be. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance_Technologies
- chillydawg 10y agoEvery single trade you place has several costs associated with it. Things like the direct cost to the broker, and the implied cost of half the current spread. I do not believe that most people have the skill or discipline to understand the difference between happening to make money and properly making money long term. As for it not being gambling - there's nothing stopping you beating bookmakers. It's doable, but you need to spend an awful lot of time researching sports (or whatever). It's the same with stocks - the vast majority of people are essentially just taking the spread and making expected losses on every trade, which the bookies (market makers in stock terms) soak up. A few people can spot outliers and take only those bets and make money long term. I stand by my claim. If it's so easy to make money on the stocks why isn't everyone doing it?
- tanderson92 10y agoLots of people are making money on stocks. But your overly broad claim that investing in the stock market is gambling is indefensible: when you invest in broad total market funds you are essentially betting on entire economies, because you are assuring yourself a right to future income streams. How is that gambling? By choosing proper low-fee funds you can minimize the brokerage fees (and you can buy securities at net asset value) so that half of your critique of long-term profitability is untrue.
- melling 10y agoIt's a shame that we can't move past this attitude on HN. Sure, it might be a difficult problem, but we learn nothing from "be afraid unless you are willing to be a full-time gambler." What made these academics think they could beat the pros? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_%26_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_%26_Co. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons
- geofft 10y agoThey had concrete and plausible answers for "What do you know that the pros do not?", and were willing to test the correctness of their answers scientifically. And they have the resources to fund those tests without risking their personal financial health. I'd give the same answer for someone who wanted to write crypto, and I'd expect much of HN to do the same. We absolutely need more people writing crypto, including crypto for fun. And the existing crypto written by "experts" is often ridiculously insecure. Please, do spend a weekend reading some book and putting together some crypto code to learn how things work. But do not proceed to encrypt your bank account credentials with them and stick the encrypted file on the public internet.
- melling 10y agoSounds like you're making up an answer. Let's go to the video. start the video at 8m38s and listen to Simmons explain that he had no idea wat he was doing when he started. A rare interview with the mathematician who cracked Wall Street https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_simons_a_rare_interview_with_the_mathematician_who_cracked_wall_street https://www.ted.com/talks/jim_simons_a_rare_interview_with_t...
- geofft 10y agoI can't watch the video right now, but assuming the transcript accurately transcribes what was said then: JS: I did it by assembling a wonderful group of people. When I started doing trading, I had gotten a little tired of mathematics. I was in my late 30s, I had a little money. I started trading and it went very well. I made quite a lot of money with pure luck. I mean, I think it was pure luck. It certainly wasn't mathematical modeling. But in looking at the data, after a while I realized: it looks like there's some structure here. And I hired a few mathematicians, and we started making some models -- just the kind of thing we did back at IDA [Institute for Defense Analyses]. You design an algorithm, you test it out on a computer. Does it work? Doesn't it work? And so on. That's basically what I said. I didn't claim that he had a brilliant and correct answer before he started. (Nor am I claiming that you need to have a brilliant and correct plan for a cryptosystem before you start.) I'm claiming that he had the resources to make experimentation not ruinous (the first part of that story is how he acquired those resources, namely, "pure luck" which "certainly wasn't mathematical modeling"), and he engaged in that experimentation and took the scientific method seriously (the second part of that story).
- arjie 10y agoDo the pros actually know anything? If you averaged the returns all professional traders make, is it actually higher than the average of all non-professionals? Besides everyone's always recommending low-cost index funds, the ones that would have given one a 31 basis point return over last year tracking the S&P500? With the gain in wealth over the last year for a 100k investment, one could almost buy a Nexus 6P on sale. Brilliant.
- adyus 10y agoProfessional traders get paid to trade, not necessarily to win.
- amendez 10y agoJust downloaded on the 6S. Nice UI but the app is a little buggy. Good Luck and awesome seeing a startup launching from Cornell Tech! Are you all planning on integrating Robinhood as a broker?
- fiatjaf 10y agoAre webhooks planned?
- rachelita 10y agoyes! We are working to offer an API this summer with a webhook callback to get notifications on your triggers getting fired programmatically, should be a LOT of fun to play with.
- datamingle 10y agoIt is possible for them to determine popular triggers and front run them. Since they are not a brokerage, I am not sure if they will be regulated/punished if they do front run trades.
- rachelita 10y agowe have plans to be become a registered investment advisor, which means we will have a responsibility to act as a fiduciary to our clients. We would never do such a thing as front running. In fact, what we would love to do is to offer back insights into the community, such that when you are placing triggers, we can tell you averages of where people are thinking of buying or selling for that stock as an indicator of key price points.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoOh good, then others can front-run based on that leaked information. Create trigger, see what the average is, place corresponding order outside of trigger so as not to give the game away, profit.
- KZeillmann 10y agoIs it just stocks, or are options available/are they planned for the future?
- rachelita 10y agoRight now we consume real time stock market data for ETFs and Stocks, as well as corporate fundamentals and real time economic events. As for when we enable trading from Trigger, whatever your broker allows you to trade we can support. First we will allow trading for stocks, and then options and currencies. We can introduce new securities quite easily into our platform.
- mmanfrin 10y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
- jsemrau 10y agoNew Order - Blue Monday Blue Monday was originally released in 1983 by the British Band New Order. It is the biggest selling 12'' of all time. With 7 1/2 minutes it is one of the longest tracks ever to chart on the UK Singles Chart. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYH8DsU2WCk
- __jal 10y agoBack in the web 1.0 days, a friend started a company named Xigo (sp? Think it was with an X) to do sort of similar stuff. There was a full domain specific language for automation. They suffered the fate of many otherwise good ideas in the ~2000 meltdown.
- alva 10y agoMixed feelings on this. In some ways, I quite like it. Certainly adds some more automation to the process and makes it simple. Nice UI. On the other hand, I am sure you are well aware of just how many amateurs lose money because they think they can actively manage and "play the stock market". My fear is that letting people make extremely, and these are extremely simple rules will make them feel even more in control and "smart" about their investments decisions. Every rule examples presented are horrific simplifications that are somewhat intuitive (the dangerous kind!), giving confidence to the user, but would never pass for a sensible trading strategy. I think you are misleading users into thinking they are much more in control than they actually are. From CEO in this comment thread >"Trigger is trying to take the emotion out of investing, as the pros do." >"As a former trader..." As a former trader you must understand how complex trading and analysis is.
- maerF0x0 10y agoCould go for value based things, if P/E of S&P 500 is below 10 buy $1000 of ${ETF}
- alva 10y agoIf you can come up with a systematic strategy in a one-liner, that gives you consistent, good risk-adjusted returns, let me know as I quite fancy being a billionaire. Saying that, "Buy Low, Sell High" isn't a bad strategy ;)
- unclebucknasty 10y agoYeah, can't quite shake the feeling that if it was really that good, you'd just use it vs. (eventually) sell it.
- maerF0x0 10y agoagreed. The hard part is not buying bad companies that have low P/E because their chances are slim to none.
- rachelita 10y ago
- rachelita 10y agoHey everyone! I’m co-founder and CEO of Trigger Finance, which I’m thrilled to share with you today :) Trigger is simplifying the world of stock investing by reducing everything to an “IF THIS, THEN THAT” statement, called a ‘trigger’. You can create triggers to track all sorts of things happening in the market -- for example, if a stock drops suddenly, or if Apple announces earnings at a certain level, or if the Fed is raising interest rates. You can use Trigger to be notified (in real-time) when important events affecting your portfolio occur, and in the future, can execute automated trades through our platform. We currently integrate with 8 different brokerages (including eTrade, Fidelity, and TDAmeritrade) for account read-access. We hope to expand this list in the future (looking at you, Robinhood!). Our mission is to help the individual investor take a more disciplined, rules-based approach to managing their portfolio. Please help us deliver on that promise by giving us your feedback! Please let us know if you have any questions - we’re here to answer them, Rachel
- tmaly 10y agodo you have integration with IB ?
- rachelita 10y agonot yet, Robinhood and IB are next up on the list for us!
- Netcob 10y agoMy first thought was that once trigger has enough users, some people might pay to get access to the rule database. That way you could predict what trigger is going to do under certain circumstances, or maybe what needs to happen for certain outcomes.
- incongruity 10y agoThat's an interesting question because, IMHO, by formalizing my rules and externalizing them, I'm sharing critically important strategy information. If ever I'm protective of my data, this would rank highly, I think. EVEN if anonymized or aggregated.
- vessenes 10y agoThis is a great, great idea. I can imagine patenting it and building a brokerage off it. Best of luck in launch.
- StriverGuy 10y agoThis is essentially Algo trading for individuals. I doubt you can patent this.
- cjbenedikt 10y agowhen for Android?
- soghoian 10y agoHello! Co-founder here. We're working on it but don't have anything to announce at the moment. Stay tuned!
- blibble 10y agohow do you deal with many clients having the same trigger then all executing the same order at the same time? if 50000 identical triggers fire at the same time trying to buy the same stock with market orders they're going to get a bad deal, and people selling are going to clean up
- alva 10y agoIf you knew that 50000 identical orders of significant value were about to fly, you could make a huge amount of money.
- wocram 10y agoIt's a good thing this is _very_ illegal :)
- Renevith 10y agoIt's certainly illegal for brokers, exchanges, and fiduciaries, sure. It's certainly not illegal for me to do it, if you happen to tell me your stop loss orders over beers, or if I predict people's stop loss orders using public information and/or a sophisticated model. So which side of the line is Trigger on? They don't seem to be a broker, exchange, or fiduciary, and they wouldn't be getting the relevant information from those sources. "The User acknowledges and agrees that upon posting or transmitting information [...] on the APP, the User assigns to the Company [...] all rights, interest and title in and to such information" If you want to manage your money through a tech startup, I suggest choosing one that is a broker and/or has a fiduciary responsibility to you!
- rachelita 10y agoWe will let our users get a double look at the market first before sending the order automatically, for precisely this reason. Only those who are confident in their orders can chose to execute automically in the market.
- qf303rjr3 10y agoI work for a quantitative hedge fund. I program computers to trade securities for a living. On any given day, code that I have written trades hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock, futures and options. I feel very confident in saying that for 99.9% of people, using this service will be a terrible, terrible idea that will only cost them money in the long run. If you want to get into the stock market, buy a low-cost index fund and hold it for the next twenty years. That's the best advice I can give you.
- alva 10y agoThis service is purposefully targeting people who know next to nothing about the stock market, and making them feel like they have some sort of clever control of the outcome of their investments. I have criticised this idea elsewhere in the thread so this will be my last post on it. I hope all HN folk reading this thread will look into it and discover how parasitical this sort of venture is.
- princeb 10y agoit's a free country and people are free to trade however they want (with restrictions haha). they just need to be aware that retail traders are not going to get the same kind of competitive advantages that the big boys like Citadel or GETCO have. it's not a "rigged" game in the same way Walmart being able to buy wholesale apples cheap and flip it to us richer is not a "rigged" game.
- alva 10y agoYou are correct, if people want to risk their money then that is their right (providing they have been supplied all the legal warnings designed to protect people from losing money in a game they don't understand). This service is the equivalent of putting an amateur chess player in front of Kasparov and suggesting they bet real money on winning because you taught them a basic opening move.
- princeb 10y ago
- tuna-piano 10y agoCould you explain how the credential / integration works with the brokerages? Is this a screen scraping integration where the provider stores my username / password and provides you with a token? Or is this directly integrated with the brokerages?
- DrSayre 10y agoWill you integrate with Schwab?
- rachelita 10y agoAt some point we'd love to. I have a Schwab account myself but can't use Trigger to trade on it unfortunately. Schwab is known to be one of the most closed environments in the investing space :/
- mmsmatt 10y agoAs far as I can tell, Trigger is neither broker nor advisor. Why a company that is none of those wants to touch my securities, I can think of no charitable reason for that. There exist a million reasons you do not want not-quite-stop-limit orders on SPY or GOOG in your personal account, you are up against trade execution systems that smoke your retail broker not to mention this outfit (who you now put between you & your broker). Please do not bring a butter knife to a gun fight and lose your shirt.
- dimino 10y agoBut what if all I want to do is spread butter, not murder someone?
- rachelita 10y agohttp://bodyecology.com/articles/benefits_of_real_butter.php http://bodyecology.com/articles/benefits_of_real_butter.php
- vehementi 10y agoWhat do you mean by smoke in this context?
- philippnagel 10y agoRetail investors can't compete with HFT in terms of order execution speed.
- vehementi 10y agoSure, but do they need to? Let's accept that HFT vampires steal a bit of the value I wanted to get. But my value is not in trying to be a HFT, it is in (ostensibly) calling that GOOG will go up or something. How does HFT screw me over in that regard?
- mod 10y agoThat would only matter if they were executing on the same trigger, wouldn't it?
- Bromskloss 10y agoTrigger was my name idea for a phone app that did this "IFTTT" thing (as it is apparently called). Well, now I don't have to write that app.