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I believe "Market Wizards - Jack D. Schwager" highlights this. When speaking with some of the best and most successful traders in the markets, he found that the

I believe "Market Wizards - Jack D. Schwager" highlights this. When speaking with some of the best and most successful traders in the markets, he found that the one common thing between them was "Game Perspective". They understood human emotion and had this desire to be the best at the game. The money/wealth was not the focus but the reward. If I remember correctly (read the book a couple of decades ago), most did not even have much of a Financial background if any. I recently read a blog post by Martin Shkreli who wrote that he was really bad at trading and doesn't participate. It takes very unique individual to be successful at trading and he is not one of them. He used the analogy where you can think of trading like a professional sport. Could you get into the Octagon with a UFC Fighter and expect to win because that is what you're doing when you try to trade. My take away is if a person like Shkreli doesn't stand a chance, then how would I....

VectorLock 6y ago
Being amoral loses its advantage when every other player is similarly feckless.
- DataWorker 6y ago
  Your point is that everyone who buys or sells assets is implicitly amoral? That seems a bit extreme though you are not the first to say it. One wonders how you can escape such condemnation yourself. Everything is a marketplace in some sense.
  - VectorLock 6y ago
    No I was simply saying that I can see why Martin's success with pharmaceuticals wasn't as easily replicated playing the stock market.
jw1224 6y ago
I’m a terrible trader, and had no shame in admitting it. The moment I saw red, I panicked and sold. If I had open orders on the market, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I found trading to be all-consuming, exhausting, and completely demoralising. But I also couldn’t bear to just let my hard-earned savings sit there, wasting away. A cup of coffee cost more than I was earning in annual interest! About 3 months ago, it suddenly dawned on me... If I know I’m too emotionally volatile to trade effectively, why not get an algorithm to do it for me? I don’t know much about the stock market, but I’m good with statistics and can write code. Why should the hedge funds have all the fun? I spent a month researching technical indicators and quantitative analysis, then another few weeks building my automated trading system from scratch. I put it on a server last week, and it’s been chugging along quietly, 24/7, ever since. I don’t have to get involved in any way — it picks stocks automatically, A/B tests different algorithms against one another, and manages its own budgets. I just set it and forget it. The only time I hear from it is when it sends me a Slack notification — with moneybags emoji, of course — whenever it makes a profitable trade. Honestly, it’s been the most fun I’ve had on a personal project for years. It’s taught me lots, kept me busy during lockdown, and might one day provide a little extra cash. We’ll see!
- chrchang523 6y ago
  I assume you've heard of index funds; out of curiosity, what makes that investing choice unappealing to you?
  - optimiz3 6y ago
    Cliche but the best investment is in yourself. The parents project was a form of this. Doesn't mean they don't also have a percent of portfolio in other asset classes like indexes.
  - jw1224 6y ago
    Oh yeah, I'm well aware there are probably far more sensible ways to invest my money. This sort of thing just really suits my personality type — it was an exciting idea, and I just ran with it. I have my own business too, which needs investment every so often, so that'll always be the first priority for me.
- bredren 6y ago
  Sounds like a fun project. How much rope does your bot have? What did you write it in / what’s the deployed stack?
  - jw1224 6y ago
    I was really hoping nobody would ask me about the stack... because... it's PHP! Hahahaha! Most hobbyists write these things in Python, which I did give some serious consideration to learning... But I know what I'm like — my interest in anything is very short-lived (ADHD!), so I wanted to get a prototype built with a language I'm already proficient in. It's built with Laravel 8, and hosted on DigitalOcean. It stores and analyses market data in PostgreSQL, and uses Redis for queue management with Laravel Horizon. Would you believe PHP has its own TA-Lib implementation? https://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.trader.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.trader.php — that was a nice surprise to discover. This gave me a good head-start on running actual analysis, although my algorithms are pretty simple and only use a few basic indicators to filter out any potential mistakes. There's no web UI (maybe one day), but it has some simple controls and and reports available through an SSH console. Ideally I won't need to interact with it at all, so Slack notifications keep me informed when anything interesting happens. I wrote a custom backtester, which runs through the console. There's no pretty graphs or anything, it's basic but makes it extremely easy to experiment with strategy variations on historical data. I ran it for a week making the smallest trades possible (~$10) whilst I ironed out some kinks and made sure things were working smoothly. It's now week 3, and I'm trusting it with $1500. I'll keep increasing that over time as I make improvements. Individual trades vary from ~$50 to ~$250, depending on algorithmic confidence and profit/loss from the previous day's trading (those margins are pretty meaningless at this level, but it's built to scale nicely in future).

VectorLock 6y ago

Being amoral loses its advantage when every other player is similarly feckless.

DataWorker 6y ago
Your point is that everyone who buys or sells assets is implicitly amoral? That seems a bit extreme though you are not the first to say it. One wonders how you can escape such condemnation yourself. Everything is a marketplace in some sense.
- VectorLock 6y ago
  No I was simply saying that I can see why Martin's success with pharmaceuticals wasn't as easily replicated playing the stock market.

jw1224 6y ago

I’m a terrible trader, and had no shame in admitting it. The moment I saw red, I panicked and sold. If I had open orders on the market, I couldn’t concentrate on anything else. I found trading to be all-consuming, exhausting, and completely demoralising. But I also couldn’t bear to just let my hard-earned savings sit there, wasting away. A cup of coffee cost more than I was earning in annual interest! About 3 months ago, it suddenly dawned on me... If I know I’m too emotionally volatile to trade effectively, why not get an algorithm to do it for me? I don’t know much about the stock market, but I’m good with statistics and can write code. Why should the hedge funds have all the fun? I spent a month researching technical indicators and quantitative analysis, then another few weeks building my automated trading system from scratch. I put it on a server last week, and it’s been chugging along quietly, 24/7, ever since. I don’t have to get involved in any way — it picks stocks automatically, A/B tests different algorithms against one another, and manages its own budgets. I just set it and forget it. The only time I hear from it is when it sends me a Slack notification — with moneybags emoji, of course — whenever it makes a profitable trade. Honestly, it’s been the most fun I’ve had on a personal project for years. It’s taught me lots, kept me busy during lockdown, and might one day provide a little extra cash. We’ll see!

chrchang523 6y ago
I assume you've heard of index funds; out of curiosity, what makes that investing choice unappealing to you?
- optimiz3 6y ago
  Cliche but the best investment is in yourself. The parents project was a form of this. Doesn't mean they don't also have a percent of portfolio in other asset classes like indexes.
- jw1224 6y ago
  Oh yeah, I'm well aware there are probably far more sensible ways to invest my money. This sort of thing just really suits my personality type — it was an exciting idea, and I just ran with it. I have my own business too, which needs investment every so often, so that'll always be the first priority for me.
bredren 6y ago
Sounds like a fun project. How much rope does your bot have? What did you write it in / what’s the deployed stack?
- jw1224 6y ago
  I was really hoping nobody would ask me about the stack... because... it's PHP! Hahahaha! Most hobbyists write these things in Python, which I did give some serious consideration to learning... But I know what I'm like — my interest in anything is very short-lived (ADHD!), so I wanted to get a prototype built with a language I'm already proficient in. It's built with Laravel 8, and hosted on DigitalOcean. It stores and analyses market data in PostgreSQL, and uses Redis for queue management with Laravel Horizon. Would you believe PHP has its own TA-Lib implementation? https://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.trader.php https://www.php.net/manual/en/intro.trader.php — that was a nice surprise to discover. This gave me a good head-start on running actual analysis, although my algorithms are pretty simple and only use a few basic indicators to filter out any potential mistakes. There's no web UI (maybe one day), but it has some simple controls and and reports available through an SSH console. Ideally I won't need to interact with it at all, so Slack notifications keep me informed when anything interesting happens. I wrote a custom backtester, which runs through the console. There's no pretty graphs or anything, it's basic but makes it extremely easy to experiment with strategy variations on historical data. I ran it for a week making the smallest trades possible (~$10) whilst I ironed out some kinks and made sure things were working smoothly. It's now week 3, and I'm trusting it with $1500. I'll keep increasing that over time as I make improvements. Individual trades vary from ~$50 to ~$250, depending on algorithmic confidence and profit/loss from the previous day's trading (those margins are pretty meaningless at this level, but it's built to scale nicely in future).