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Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

triggerfinance.com

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Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#51

Post by qf303rjr3 »

I work for a quantitative hedge fund. I program computers to trade securities for a living. On any given day, code that I have written trades hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock, futures and options.

I feel very confident in saying that for 99.9% of people, using this service will be a terrible, terrible idea that will only cost them money in the long run.

If you want to get into the stock market, buy a low-cost index fund and hold it for the next twenty years. That's the best advice I can give you.

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#52

Post by tuna-piano »

alva wrote: post #39

Mixed feelings on this. In some ways, I quite like it. Certainly adds some more automation to the process and makes it simple. Nice UI. On the other hand, I am sure you are well aware of just how many amateurs lose money because they think they can actively manage and "play the stock market". My fear is that letting people make extremely, and these are extremely simple rules will make them feel even more in control a…

My first reaction with this was "seems fun". I'm aware that it's likely an index fund would probably still do better over time, but there is an appeal to me that maybe I could beat the market and if not it would still be fun trying.

Am I correct that assuming in the long run, the only difference between going long stocks/ETFs through this app vs just buy+holding an index fund would be:

-Cash sitting around not in an investment

-$7 commission on each order

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#53

Post by alva »

qf303rjr3 wrote: post #51

I work for a quantitative hedge fund. I program computers to trade securities for a living. On any given day, code that I have written trades hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stock, futures and options. I feel very confident in saying that for 99.9% of people, using this service will be a terrible, terrible idea that will only cost them money in the long run. If you want to get into the stock market, buy a lo…

This service is purposefully targeting people who know next to nothing about the stock market, and making them feel like they have some sort of clever control of the outcome of their investments.

I have criticised this idea elsewhere in the thread so this will be my last post on it. I hope all HN folk reading this thread will look into it and discover how parasitical this sort of venture is.

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#55

Post by geofft »

melling wrote: post #45
chillydawg wrote: post #18

Remember, the stock market is just gambling. Fancy tools and triggers just let you kid yourself you know what you're doing. Unless you do it as a full time job, you probably should not ever directly trade individual stocks. What do you know that the pros do not?

It's a shame that we can't move past this attitude on HN. Sure, it might be a difficult problem, but we learn nothing from "be afraid unless you are willing to be a full-time gambler." What made these academics think they could beat the pros? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D._E._Shaw_%26_Co . https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Harris_Simons

They had concrete and plausible answers for "What do you know that the pros do not?", and were willing to test the correctness of their answers scientifically. And they have the resources to fund those tests without risking their personal financial health.

I'd give the same answer for someone who wanted to write crypto, and I'd expect much of HN to do the same. We absolutely need more people writing crypto, including crypto for fun. And the existing crypto written by "experts" is often ridiculously insecure. Please, do spend a weekend reading some book and putting together some crypto code to learn how things work. But do not proceed to encrypt your bank account credentials with them and stick the encrypted file on the public internet.

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#56

Post by rachelita »

tuna-piano wrote: post #54

Could you explain how the credential / integration works with the brokerages? Is this a screen scraping integration where the provider stores my username / password and provides you with a token? Or is this directly integrated with the brokerages?

We rely on Trading Ticket for brokerage integration, you can read more about them here https://www.trade.it/ check out there terms.

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#58

Post by rachelita »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #41
alva wrote: post #39

Mixed feelings on this. In some ways, I quite like it. Certainly adds some more automation to the process and makes it simple. Nice UI. On the other hand, I am sure you are well aware of just how many amateurs lose money because they think they can actively manage and "play the stock market". My fear is that letting people make extremely, and these are extremely simple rules will make them feel even more in control a…

Could go for value based things, if P/E of S&P 500 is below 10 buy $1000 of ${ETF}

We have P/E ratio triggers available!

Re: Show HN: Trigger – IFTTT for the stock market

#60

Post by Godel_unicode »

rachelita wrote: post #31
datamingle wrote: post #30

It is possible for them to determine popular triggers and front run them. Since they are not a brokerage, I am not sure if they will be regulated/punished if they do front run trades.

we have plans to be become a registered investment advisor, which means we will have a responsibility to act as a fiduciary to our clients. We would never do such a thing as front running. In fact, what we would love to do is to offer back insights into the community, such that when you are placing triggers, we can tell you averages of where people are thinking of buying or selling for that stock as an indicator of k…

Oh good, then others can front-run based on that leaked information.

Create trigger, see what the average is, place corresponding order outside of trigger so as not to give the game away, profit.

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