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Show HN: Deploy your own algo-trader in 5 minutes with 0 code
- keyle 6y agoCool. But be very careful of such apps. They're all based on historical results and often leave out crucial fees and spread that you would incur in high volatility environment. Nor they account for slipping, missing the bus, buying late etc. A- if it's to good to be true, it is B- in a gold rush the people getting consistently rich are the ones selling shovels and buckets. I'm sure technically wise this app is an achievement and I don't want to take away from that, but when it comes to trading algos: ideas are cheap, execution is everything. And you won't beat the big boys at this game.
- jdminhbg 6y agoThe front-and-center portfolio is the "Boglehead" three-fund portfolio, which is stock/bond index funds. It's not exactly the too-good-to-be-true gold rush model.
- Closi 6y agoHmm it feels like this should be regulated but I don’t know enough about US law...
- tjs8rj 6y agoCertainly is! Which is why live-trading isn't enabled just yet. This library is my personal one, but the moment you provide investment advice or manage other's money you run into regulation.
- airstrike 6y agoIs this an ad?
- jdminhbg 6y agoI'd like to see at least a cursory "how it works" section (unless I missed it?). Do you plug into the API of some broker platform?
- tjs8rj 6y agoGood idea. I use Interactive Brokers for most of these to execute the actual trading (though may consider Alpaca given recent events).
- iwd 6y agoThis seems like a “problem” that shouldn’t be solved. If the thing keeping you from algorithmic trading is difficulty in deploying, you probably have no business doing it. Cynically, this seems like a way to draw more naive novices into the market. As the old saying goes, if you don’t know who the mark is, it’s you.
- blondie9x 6y agoVanguard and Fidelity balanced outperform these. Not sure I would use this over those choices.
- tjs8rj 6y agoHey everyone! This is a collection of my investment modules - strategies codified from my experience in quantitative investing and software development. All categorized into a short compendium. These models (algo-investors as I call them) serve different purposes, some just remove the stress and emotion of maintaining a portfolio (automated rebalancing, etc), some seek to capitalize on binary events (like elections or regulation changes), some seek to minimize volatility, some seek to "beat the market" (leveraged modules, hedge fund trackers), and some are just fun (wallstreetsbets sentiment tracker). As some have pointed out: these results DO account for slippage, and many are showing actual live results (not just backtests). This is a highly regulated environment (I'm US-based), and while not yet registered (in the process), hence why live trading isn't allowed yet, the intention is to have live trading available as soon as possible.
- endisneigh 6y agoI recommend the SPY algorithm. Go to whatever brokerage you like and dollar cost average by putting in 1/365 your budget daily in SPY. Zero fees, and you can set it and forget it! In all seriousness the Boglehead strategy looks neat, I'll take a look. Is it difficult to start an ETF? Seems like all of these should just be ETFs you can purchase at any brokerage.
- tjs8rj 6y agoGlad you recognize this fact. Love explaining the SPY as "rank public equities by revenue, take the top 500, then weight by market capitalization". Starting an ETF is highly regulated, this differs in that these algorithms just manage your money interfacing with the public market rather than moving in ETF. Less regulation, but encounters tax implications (hence the less frequent trading of these models) among other things.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- andoriyu 6y agoIf we're talking about long term investment than dollar cost averaging is about the same as lump sum on January 1st. As for starting an ETF... Well minimal capital requirement is 100k, to launch it's probably 300k total investment. Then there is a lot of legal requirements and obligations. Whole process is at least 6 months I guess it depends on what's your goal. Some brokerages let you create a bundle of stocks and share them publicly or privately. Which is sound more like what you want.
- bgirard 6y agoDoesn't the research support time in market producing better value over cost dollar averaging?
- endisneigh 6y agoI'm not sure - I guess it would depend on the volatility.
- genericacct 6y agoStrange that the longest running chart on the front page reaches back to 2008 only
- tjs8rj 6y agoTicker data is expensive! Many of these models have their results from live data, but some are just backtests. Relatively inexpensive datasets for backtesting at the ticker level start at 2008 (unfortunately, obviously, given that considering a flashpoint like that is important for rigorously confirming a model works). As soon as feasible, I want to purchase the larger datasets that often go as far back as 1985 for a more comprehensive picture.
- satellite2 6y agoIt would be nice. My first impression was that the selected models seems very risky and would realy depend on the last decade which was probably the best in 70 years. I would like to see how they would have performed during a crisis (and bonus point for using a log scale on long duration to avoid minimizing the past)
- mrleinad 6y agoRelated to that, do you have any recommendations on good quality ticker data sources you'd buy?
- Exuma 6y agoInteresting
- georgebarnett 6y agoWhy would I use an unlicensed app with no description whatsoever about the company other than a generic website with up and to the right charts? I don’t know what your intent is but this doesn’t fill me with any confidence whatsoever. If you took this seriously, you would wait until after you’ve met regulatory requirements to launch.
- tjs8rj 6y agoFair points and I take this feedback to heart. This isn't so much a "launch" as a "show". This is my personal library. I've been adding to, maintaining, and using this for a while. My intent is primarily to gauge interest and share something I've worked hard on.
- snarkypixel 6y agoMy 2cents: to lower the onboarding, would be great to set it to get notification about what /would/ be bought or sold; eventually users will trust the system and move some of their money to it.
- danudey 6y agoThis is the thing I always think about with these kinds of systems, whether someone else's advice or do-it-yourself algos or "go here to find this information". If you follow the advice and record the trades you would have made, you can get an idea of if the advice is solid, and you can also get a hang for not panic-selling your first dip due to new-investor jitters. It also means that you won't follow crazy trends (like impulse-dumping everything into GME) because it's so obviously an outlier that it won't give you any useful data anyway. When I was in high school there was a faux-stock-trading website, they gave you ten thousand dollars in fake money and you could fake-buy stocks with it. A great way to play around with, and learn about, the stock market with zero actual risk or investment required. I ended up putting everything in Diamond Multimedia at $5 and pulling it out the next day at $6, then dumping the rest into eBay (within a month after their IPO IIRC) and forgetting about the website until one day I logged in and my investment was 10x. I patted myself on the back and never invested anything in anything again.
- edoceo 6y agoYea, I make a tool that does this. So, my friends who use it just see the historical Actions (buy/sell) and price points. And one "trick" for backtesting is overlay SPX or SPY or DIA (or other favorite) with the results. Maybe it's obvious but folks new to the game are really helped by a comp to the market visual.
- bonestamp2 6y agoIf they implement paper trading (as their survey suggests they're thinking about) then that should build the same level of trust. If your fake money is growing then you'll want to put real money in.
- shireboy 6y agoMost of these type things (quantopian is one I've tried) offer "paper trading" that is just that. You simulate it on "paper" until you gain confidence and use it to invest. I think the docs for this says they do as well
- sub7 6y agoAre you funded?
- danudey 6y agoI'm a little confused. I created an account just for kicks and it immediately said there were 58,912 people ahead of me and 2,877 behind me. This means that 2,877 people signed up for the service in the time between my account being created and the page rendering? But the number hasn't gone up at all, so me and the other 2,877 people were I guess part of a huge surge of signups all within the same 100ms or so, and no one else has signed up since? This is quite confusing, and does not encourage trust.
- tjs8rj 6y agoSorry, could certainly clarify this better. Everyone who hasn't completed any actions falls into the same batch. Providing feedback or referring moves you to the next batch. In other words, those 2,877 people are others who signed up and didn't complete any further actions, and are all in the same batch for access. Hope this makes more sense.
- bostik 6y agoI would be careful when playing around with a viral queue mechanism. You need to be very clear (even if only for yourself) with your own incentives why you're using the strategy. It can work well if you're filtering for high-quality signal in your own feedback loop. But it can also backfire badly if the intention is to generate hype amplification.
- bequanna 6y agoI get the exact same ahead/behind values and based on your post time, I'm ~10 mins behind you. I would guess these numbers are meaningless and only exist to motivate you to click the 'Bump me up in the queue' button and complete a survey.
- asah 6y agoKudos. Sorry you have to put up with the haters on HN who are probably just jealous of the traders who are cleaning up in this crazy market.
- tr1ll10nb1ll 6y agoI gotta be really honest with you, the title is very catchy but when I open the website, I don't find any detail regarding how this would work, what exactly is this. All I know is it's got some algo trading modules but what next? Like, what is this thing? Is this legal? Is this just more like a compilation of strategies that tell the user what to invest in or is this like a bot like it says it is in which case, the users would need to trust this thing to invest using an algo-trader bot deployed by a venture no one's really heard of. If this is a project, then great, the concept sounds pretty cool but if this is more like an actual startup, then the path is gnarly, since there are well-trusted platforms already out there including: - https://www.algotrader.com https://www.algotrader.com - https://www.quantconnect.com https://www.quantconnect.com, etc. And if you're referring to "no-code" platforms : - https://www.algogen.io https://www.algogen.io - https://www.quantreex.com https://www.quantreex.com - https://streak.world https://streak.world I'm not trying to say your platform is not good per se or anything but if it's meant to be a startup, then it's not doing a particularly great job at it as of now. It'd be great if you could answer this for me ( if this is a startup and not a project for fun ) : Are you aware that in order for your platform to be trusted, it doesn't need to be slightly better than the competition but better on a large magnitude? If you know so, then what makes your platform way better than other platforms out there? Thanks!
- tjs8rj 6y agoHey! I appreciate the feedback (rereading the site I can see the confusion), but I think concluding this is “doing poorly as a startup” is a little premature and something you can’t accurately judge, especially since from your submission history it looks like you have little in the way of a successful startup background when this field is very much a learn by doing one. This is closer to a roboadvisor than those niche hobby brokerages. The massive difference is those all have incredible barriers to entry - knowing how to code, or at least knowing how to build a profitable automated investment strategy. These are all turnkey, transparent, and no code customizable. Regular investors can use these, only a few can properly take advantage of those you listed. Most of my users came from Fidelity, Schwab, Betterment, and so on. Not Quantconnect (though plenty have come from there and others). Compared to roboadvisors: these models are more far more innovative and diverse. Use crypto or quantitative strategies made by professionals or curated from other users instead of standard stock bond allocations. Even innovative roboadvisors like m1finance only go as far as hedge fund followers. The difference is huge - the goal here is to be your platform for higher risk and higher return investing, for the 15-20% of your portfolio you want to go further at the risk of larger drawdowns. I was where you were on my entrepreneurial journey recently, so my best advice is just to do. “10x improvements” and other academics they teach you in SUS is super useful (and often true), but until actually applying the learning, finding what works for you in the current market, you’re just repeating catchphrases without understanding them. You likely won’t even understand the magnitude of an improvement until you do your research and try things out, so best to focus on that when your idea has been validated first. For your reference: this scrappy site with no optimizations, no contact, no how it works, no fluff, has already garnered several millions of $ in pledged user investment, has profitable and repeatable acquisition channels with an on page organic conversion rate of a large fraction of visitors, has collected thousands of data points, surveys, and interviews towards product market fit and all aspects of the model from target customers to revenue streams, and all this only a few weeks (late December) into prelaunch. I added only what was important to my preexisting library and put it out there. All my research and customer feedback so far suggests that this is a magnitude of improvement, and many are desperate for a platform like this. Hope that clears it up and thanks again for the feedback!
- dang 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25423588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25423588
- robjan 6y agoThis is more of a description of a robo-advisor than an algo-trading system. Algo trading usually describes what hedge funds and market makers do.