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Stock trading robots, everything on autopilot, makes much more money than my "real job" as technical team lead for big corp. Truly lifestyle business running f

by SirLJ 9y ago

Stock trading robots, everything on autopilot, makes much more money than my "real job" as technical team lead for big corp. Truly lifestyle business running from the cloud and not looking for investor, customers or employees... One day will leave to my kids to run...

malchow 9y ago
What do you trade and how? No need for reproducible details, but useful to know something. I have been writing options scripts (short puts) for a couple years and have had a lot of fun solving puzzles there.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  Highly liquid US equities, using discount broker API to find, initiate, monitor and exit trades - everything written in Python and hosted on few VPS around the world (for redundancy) ... Options are to complicated for me :-)
  - nhylated 9y ago
    What books/blogs/forums/libraries/frameworks would you recommend to get started?
    - SirLJ 9y ago
      I cannot recommend anything concrete, all authors are selling either ideas that do not work anymore or just selling the dream... No one will publish a working trading strategy and even someone crazy enough to do it, it will be arbitraged pretty quickly... The best way is to buy stock market data and start testing ideas until you find your edge... All that said, here are the books I usually recommend, more for motivation and inspiration: The Asian Saga by James Clavell, reading as a kid on how to rule your life, business and create a dynasty... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby - on how to rule the world :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp - basically the father of quant/systematic trading and one of the greatest minds of our time... http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/ http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/
imhoguy 9y ago
What are your Feb results so far? 2018 started not so easy as 2017 was.
- SirLJ 9y ago
  Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am flat, but my strategies are not really competing with the broad market... Actually my losing years are at the bottom of the market cycle for some reason...
  - le-mark 9y ago
    Have you back tested your strategies for down weeks/months? What is the time horizon for you typical trade (days/weeks/months)? Just trying to get a feel for what type of trading you're doing! Congrats by the way :)
    - SirLJ 9y ago
      Yes, you have to test for years, as many years as you can find data for, to cover at least few market cycles, so you know how your strategy will perform in both bull and bear markets...
      - le-mark 9y ago
        You've mentioned you wrote your trading bots in Python, how does one go about doing that? If I write a script that executes buys/sells via an api, I still need to periodically get market data, build candle stick charts (or whatever) and calculate moving averages (or whatever) to then decide to buy and/or sell. Then to back test, you have to do all that, not with an api, but against and data from a flat file or whatever. I guess you could do it by hand for awhile, but that would certainly become tedious. It's actually quite complex. Would you recommend anything to read to get started building trading bots?
        SirLJ 9y ago
        You'll have to start the other way around: start testing ideas using the back data and in the end you'll have not only the test to prove the theory, but the algo written as well... The automation after that is easy, the current data is not a problem either, you can get it trough the API from your discount broker, here are the docs for Interactive Brokers for example: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041 https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041

by SirLJ 9y ago

malchow 9y ago

What do you trade and how? No need for reproducible details, but useful to know something. I have been writing options scripts (short puts) for a couple years and have had a lot of fun solving puzzles there.

SirLJ 9y ago
Highly liquid US equities, using discount broker API to find, initiate, monitor and exit trades - everything written in Python and hosted on few VPS around the world (for redundancy) ... Options are to complicated for me :-)
- nhylated 9y ago
  What books/blogs/forums/libraries/frameworks would you recommend to get started?
  - SirLJ 9y ago
    I cannot recommend anything concrete, all authors are selling either ideas that do not work anymore or just selling the dream... No one will publish a working trading strategy and even someone crazy enough to do it, it will be arbitraged pretty quickly... The best way is to buy stock market data and start testing ideas until you find your edge... All that said, here are the books I usually recommend, more for motivation and inspiration: The Asian Saga by James Clavell, reading as a kid on how to rule your life, business and create a dynasty... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asian_Saga More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of a New Elite by Sebastian Mallaby - on how to rule the world :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Money_Than_God A Man For All Markets by Edward O. Thorp - basically the father of quant/systematic trading and one of the greatest minds of our time... http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/ http://www.edwardothorp.com/books/a-man-for-all-markets/

imhoguy 9y ago

What are your Feb results so far? 2018 started not so easy as 2017 was.

SirLJ 9y ago
Unfortunately (or fortunately) I am flat, but my strategies are not really competing with the broad market... Actually my losing years are at the bottom of the market cycle for some reason...
- le-mark 9y ago
  Have you back tested your strategies for down weeks/months? What is the time horizon for you typical trade (days/weeks/months)? Just trying to get a feel for what type of trading you're doing! Congrats by the way :)
  - SirLJ 9y ago
    Yes, you have to test for years, as many years as you can find data for, to cover at least few market cycles, so you know how your strategy will perform in both bull and bear markets...
    - le-mark 9y ago
      You've mentioned you wrote your trading bots in Python, how does one go about doing that? If I write a script that executes buys/sells via an api, I still need to periodically get market data, build candle stick charts (or whatever) and calculate moving averages (or whatever) to then decide to buy and/or sell. Then to back test, you have to do all that, not with an api, but against and data from a flat file or whatever. I guess you could do it by hand for awhile, but that would certainly become tedious. It's actually quite complex. Would you recommend anything to read to get started building trading bots?
      - SirLJ 9y ago
        You'll have to start the other way around: start testing ideas using the back data and in the end you'll have not only the test to prove the theory, but the algo written as well... The automation after that is easy, the current data is not a problem either, you can get it trough the API from your discount broker, here are the docs for Interactive Brokers for example: https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041 https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=5041