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Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

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Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#191

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #172
cm2187 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't agree more. I have met so many programmers in banking who seem to actively avoid having to learn anything about a bank, not even complex math. In theory, project managers are supposed to bridge the gap between the business and programmers, however my experience is that they usually understand neither the business nor the IT side, and are only adding more confusion. People with both knowledge of both worlds a…

what then is the best approach to learning how a bank works? where would one such programmer start?

Work for a bank.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#192

Post by otakucode »

praulv wrote: post #178
otakucode wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has offshoring ever been a significant factor in this arena? Given the profoundly proprietary nature of the systems being built, I would think that unlikely. Offshoring development is a good way to find your custom software reskinned and sold to a competitor without much legal recourse. Also, is 'mainstream' programming that common of a need? I had read (here on a HN comment thread) awhile ago that many organizations…

You are thinking of Q and Kdb which are used to process high throughput tick data.

Yes you are exactly correct! Kdb and the Q language that back it. I thought that was really prevalent in the trading arena just based on other postings I'd come across on HN.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#193

Post by someguy12 »

Chyzwar wrote: post #184
v64 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as does the joy in solving a problem This is it for me. Futures trading is a zero sum game (negative sum if you factor in fees), so writing a program to automatically extract value from an ever changing market is a nontrivial and ongoing project. But unlike a game, getting good at it can pay the bills in a real way. I understand that in the big picture long term, I'm not making much of a mark on society, but nevert…

Markets are not zero-sum game it is a common misconception. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-stock-market-is-not-a-zer...

That quote is misleading. He's talking about perceived price. The actual price of an equity is the price at which the execution occurs. And for every execution there are two sides, hence the zero sum game is the only game in town.

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#194

Post by v64 »

Chyzwar wrote: post #184
v64 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as does the joy in solving a problem This is it for me. Futures trading is a zero sum game (negative sum if you factor in fees), so writing a program to automatically extract value from an ever changing market is a nontrivial and ongoing project. But unlike a game, getting good at it can pay the bills in a real way. I understand that in the big picture long term, I'm not making much of a mark on society, but nevert…

Markets are not zero-sum game it is a common misconception. http://www.businessinsider.com/the-stock-market-is-not-a-zer...

That's why I specifically called out futures trading. From [1]:

> In the financial markets, options and futures are examples of zero-sum games, excluding transaction costs. For every person who gains on a contract, there is a counter-party who loses.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/z/zero-sumgame.asp

Re: Coders who trade: Wall Street designs its staff for the future

#195

Post by carterschonwald »

log_base_login wrote: post #166
carterschonwald wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WELL said! :) I stumbled into finance a few years ago and I’ve had overall the best bosses and work env ofanyone I know. I’m also doing a more audacious program of research engineering/ computer science than I could likely do anywhere else. I like to sometimes describe my work as some combination of “making the systems that fund aerospace at least as reliable as commercial aircraft”, as transparent as intergalactic v…

Thanks for the praise, and for the insight per your experience. Sounds like a great gig! I looked you up, and see that you are likely working exclusively in Haskell, but thought you might derive some value from Carl Cook's presentation on optimizing HFT code at the most recent cpp convention. I recognize the languages are distinctly different, but he provides some interesting theoretical points along the way that mig…

I’ll have a gander! Thx for the link. I do code in other stuff when it makes sense ;)

Yeah building stuff that works easily in the small and sanely in the large is a fun challenge. Also hard.

Possibly because of your original comment, or perhaps unrelatedly, I’ve been lately saying “finance done right is the lock free wait free scheduling algorithm for moving society’s resources around” —— all the other stuff folks think of as finance is really just icing and fancy wrapping on top of that core truth

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