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Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#51

Post by zombieprocess »

backtestingmofo wrote: post #44
tudelo wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any way you can give more details on... Where you trade? What sort of trades? How much capital to start doing something like this?

I have been using Questrade for a while (I’m from Canada) but they are closing their API so I will have to switch to Interactive Broker... My algorithms are mainly swing/long term, so making a few trades a month. I like to trade and back test ETFs like SPY and SPXL since they have high volumes and are more easy to « predict ». I started with 10k and it didn’t feel risky at all since it was post 2009 :)

Any resources on learning swing/long term algorithms that you mentioned?

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#52

Post by mlevental »

lefstathiou wrote: post #49

We created a tool used in niche fixed income asset-backed securities (which are heavily engineered). We crawl EDGAR for ABS-EE filings which are posted in XML, clean and standardize them, drop them into a data base and then allow users to create instant stratifications of the portfolio (rather than having to download the 80k row loan file and run pivot tables). This allows someone buying the B tranche of FORDO 2017-B…

which tool are you using to parse the xml? a long time ago i used arelle but it didn't work really well.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#53

Post by backtestingmofo »

zombieprocess wrote: post #51
backtestingmofo wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using Questrade for a while (I’m from Canada) but they are closing their API so I will have to switch to Interactive Broker... My algorithms are mainly swing/long term, so making a few trades a month. I like to trade and back test ETFs like SPY and SPXL since they have high volumes and are more easy to « predict ». I started with 10k and it didn’t feel risky at all since it was post 2009 :)

Any resources on learning swing/long term algorithms that you mentioned?

I'm a software engineer and I developed trading algorithms just by playing around and visualizing data. Once you have historical data, technical indicators and a simple back tester, you can test some trading strategies and get feedback quickly. Graphing the output of your tests to analyze the annual return over time also helps a lot to design algorithms.

I have limited financial knowledge but I would recommend reading about technical analysis and technical indicators (This one is short and sweet https://www.investopedia.com/university/technical/) just so you can grasp the basics.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#54

Post by kiril-me »

AndHeiberg wrote: post #11

I don't generally, but I've been hacking away at the infrastructure for high frequency trading crypto currencies for a while. I originally just wanted to do arbitrage trading, so I built a simple tool to find opportunities using pre-existing services. But as I slowly learned more about it, I had to expand it into monitoring the exchanges in real time with orderbooks and past trades to get around annoying false positi…

I have the same path. There is the small opportunity in crypto space. But it's enormous work to make it stable. I would like to chat.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#56

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

somebodyaround wrote: post #4
catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #2

I just made a visualization tool recently. scatterstocks.com

Nice. Seen anything interesting with your tool other than the amazon observation? You should update your resume with this, scatterstocks.com. The autocomplete feature isn't working with Firefox Quantum(60) on Windows 10.

Definitely the Apple example I used. For example, when Apple acquired the Google AI Chief, Google definitely takes a dip.

There's also one with a headline "Tesla stops Model 3 production" or something, and Ford, GM and Chrysler go up

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#57

Post by catchmeifyoucan »

davidhyde wrote: post #16
catchmeifyoucan wrote: post #2

I just made a visualization tool recently. scatterstocks.com

Loading failed for the with source “ https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-119337219-1” . index.html:6 ReferenceError: can't access lexical declaration `NEWS_ITEM_TEMPLATE' before initialization init-templates.js:15:32 Firefox on windows 7 IE does not work either

Clearly, I didn't test on Firefox :( thanks for bringing that to my attention.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone designs financial engineering tools as a hobby?

#60

Post by tacostakohashi »

jerry40 wrote: post #32
tacostakohashi wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also had a previous job doing exactly that... but it was an billing / accounting system at a print company. Certain large customers (a bank, an airline) had contracts where they would order large batches of printed forms, luggage tickets, sick bags, etc, at some negotiated quantity / price (taking into account the size of the print run, our capacity at the time, etc.). We (the print company) would then print it and…

It is the interesting idea to make this tool as generic as possible! Like a framework for matching different types of events based on some rules + a visual explanation for any chain of matched events. Perhaps I should think about this idea. Thanks!

Yeah, and the visual explaination part is actually just as important as getting the right results. For any complex system with financial impact there will always be people claiming that the output is wrong, so you need to be able to quickly and easily justify everything.
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