Most things worth learning come with a cost. Writing code costs time. Regarding 20-30% returns on fake money, but 0-5% on real money, trading fees should be an

Most things worth learning come with a cost. Writing code costs time. Regarding 20-30% returns on fake money, but 0-5% on real money, trading fees should be an assumption you make when you trade with fake money. I'm guessing you did, but if there's such a wide disparity, it just means you have to re-evaluate. Writing strategies is just like a software startup. Be agile, course correct often, when expectations differ from actual results, find out why. If trading costs is really your primary issue, I guess I'm plugging http://www.algodeal.com http://www.algodeal.com since I just discovered them over the weekend and it sounds sort of cool and like a good platform to learn to do it with no cost (except the cost of many Hello World programs). [I am in no way affiliated with Algo Deal. I haven't even really looked into it that much. But their splash page sounds cool and I'm frankly envious that its their startup and not mine]