Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

news.ycombinator.com

41–50 of 254 posts

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#41

There are a few things to watch out for: 1. Systematic trading doesn't necessarily require an algorithm. For instance this rule might work (over a 5 year horizon, don't try it monthly): "buy very large cap stocks if their P/E goes below 4 and sell if it goes over 10." But you don't need an algo. 2. The market has long bull runs. So you might have an algo that has some long bias. It will seem to perform above chance.…

* Use benchmarks against performance

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#42

When trades are placed using a fixed setup of rules or algorithms it is called algorithmic trading. HFT is a type of algo trading where latency is one of the important rules. So, while all HFT trades are algo trades, reverse isn't true. AFAIK some(maybe a lot) of algorithm or quant firms hire people who can read the latest investment research, form a hypothesis and test out the hypothesis to see whether there is a wi…

> If someone says their algorithm relies on some sort of TA, run for the hills.

Care to explain? I'm genuinely curious as I've had some success in this area. Curious if I should be aware of something that I'm not...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#43
post #23

I know cases of algo traders coming from capital markets that have been so successful that they were banned in some crypto exchanges for using highly efficient strategies. One of the guys (he works in a top market maker during the day) told me he was making around 100btc/month back in Q1-Q2'17. Edit: Not saying it's easy to reach that level of profits, just that it's possible for professional/sophisticated traders.

I know a guy who makes so much money he got banned from the internet. He told me he makes 1000000 Btc a day. Fact.

These things happen, and with much bigger amounts... Trend following or HFT strategies are not the only way to make profit in inefficient markets. Eg:

https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/bitc...

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#44

There are a few things to watch out for: 1. Systematic trading doesn't necessarily require an algorithm. For instance this rule might work (over a 5 year horizon, don't try it monthly): "buy very large cap stocks if their P/E goes below 4 and sell if it goes over 10." But you don't need an algo. 2. The market has long bull runs. So you might have an algo that has some long bias. It will seem to perform above chance.…

Another one I often see people miss is failing to account for trading fees and taxes.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#45
I wrote a triangular arbitrage bot for cryptocurrencies on Binance, and made like 0.01 ETH with ~0.3 ETH. I think that was just luck though, because all three trades would never go through right away because the price anomaly that caused the arbitrage opportunity would be gone before I could make all three trades. So I ended up holding some sketchy coins that happened to go up relative to ETH before I sold them back.

I used Python and ccxt.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#46
A problem that people have pointed out in the past about cryptocurrency exchange arbitrage is counterparty risk: different prices on different exchanges may be taking into account the possibility that the exchange won't allow withdrawals, will delay the withdrawals, or doesn't have enough assets to satisfy all of its obligations. A large number of cryptocurrency exchanges have defaulted and/or restricted withdrawals in the past. So, an arbitrage strategy might appear very effective yet result in holding cryptocurrency or fiat currency on an exchange that won't allow it to be withdrawn or redeemed as expected.

This could happen because of fraud by the exchange, fraud against the exchange, hacking of the exchange, or regulatory risks where other financial intermediaries stop working with an exchange or regulators threaten to punish an exchange if it processes certain transactions.

Some people have suggested that because arbitrage opportunities are pursued aggressively, most price differences between cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges that persist are probably mainly due to people taking account of counterparty risk. In that case you could still profit some of the time by betting that a risky exchange will remain solvent, but you might be taking a larger risk than you realize.

Another interpretation is that some apparent cryptocurrency arbitrage opportunities are really opportunities to earn a premium for helping people evade capital controls and other regulatory restrictions on moving money around. For example, there are lots of people in China who would be happy to pay you a premium if you'd accept a payment in China and make a corresponding payment in Canada. In that case you might feel like you're being a clever arbitrageur but you're largely receiving a payment for helping someone circumvent regulations¹.

(The implicit moral opprobrium that might be read there isn't intended, but I think it's interesting to consider how cryptocurrencies can sometimes make people feel very clever when they aren't, in fact, the cleverest ones in the situation!)

(¹ which isn't necessarily unreasonable to describe as arbitrage)

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#47
Right now I have one of (or the?) fastest HFT bot on gdax -- I define "fastest" as being on average the first bot to re place maker orders at best when the price moves. With 1 being the first order in line it's currently averaging 1.39 on price changes -- so it gets a ton of matches.

The bot uses a NN for predicting the price. I've been working on it for 3 months and so far the bot is profitable.

If anyone out there is interested in this space I'm looking for a partner. Also open to business offers.

The whole pipeline (data collection, data processing, trading bot, backtesting, model training, etc.) is built on golang, aws, and training with keras.

Shoot me an email [redacted]

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#48

When trades are placed using a fixed setup of rules or algorithms it is called algorithmic trading. HFT is a type of algo trading where latency is one of the important rules. So, while all HFT trades are algo trades, reverse isn't true. AFAIK some(maybe a lot) of algorithm or quant firms hire people who can read the latest investment research, form a hypothesis and test out the hypothesis to see whether there is a wi…

These days, HFT mostly relies on buying uninformed flow and avoiding toxic flow. You need low latency but that race to zero is well underway. There's been some decent consolidation purely around gaining access to retail order flow.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

#49
post #23

I know cases of algo traders coming from capital markets that have been so successful that they were banned in some crypto exchanges for using highly efficient strategies. One of the guys (he works in a top market maker during the day) told me he was making around 100btc/month back in Q1-Q2'17. Edit: Not saying it's easy to reach that level of profits, just that it's possible for professional/sophisticated traders.

I know a guy who makes so much money he got banned from the internet. He told me he makes 1000000 Btc a day. Fact.

So your guy makes $8,957,005,000 daily?
Post reply on HN