Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 120 posts

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#61

Post by throwawaymath »

throwawaykyok wrote: post #23

What you have built looks great and I am sure a lot of work went into it. However, as someone with a bit of trading experience (running a profitable custom-built trading system myself) who has friends that lost money I would like to post a few words of warning to anyone who believes they can build profitable trading strategies on top of someone else's platform: It's extremely unlikely. While you may hear stories of p…

Out of curiosity, do you also have experience trading equities/derivatives? I largely agree with you (especially the words of caution and about buying other peoples' trading infra), though I'd push back a bit on your assessment of automated trading at lower frequencies than HFT. I'm in strong agreement with you about the lack of utility for what is typically called "charting" or "technical analysis", but I don't think it would be fair to characterize all of stat arb at less than HFT timescales this way.

But my experience is entirely outside cryptocurrencies, so take that for what you will. I'm just curious to hear if you're also applying this perspective outside cryptocurrency trading. If anything I'd expect it to be far easier to profitably trade cryptocurrencies these days since the space is still so inefficient.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#62

Post by rohitgoyal »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #26
rohitgoyal wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your feedback. Would love to hear more on why you think it is a terrible idea.

why do people need to run trading bots ? what's the point? you are not going to win against professional trading bots. And you wont do any better than buy and hold investing anyway, after taxes and fees. A good startup should add real value to the world. Your startup enables a completely pointless activity.

The platform is for traders who knows what they are doing. We have professional traders building their trading strategies on the platform. We are working on marketplace where non-professionals would be able to invest in professional trader's strategies for profit share.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#64

Post by throwawaykyok »

throwawaymath wrote: post #61
throwawaykyok wrote: post #23

What you have built looks great and I am sure a lot of work went into it. However, as someone with a bit of trading experience (running a profitable custom-built trading system myself) who has friends that lost money I would like to post a few words of warning to anyone who believes they can build profitable trading strategies on top of someone else's platform: It's extremely unlikely. While you may hear stories of p…

Out of curiosity, do you also have experience trading equities/derivatives? I largely agree with you (especially the words of caution and about buying other peoples' trading infra), though I'd push back a bit on your assessment of automated trading at lower frequencies than HFT. I'm in strong agreement with you about the lack of utility for what is typically called "charting" or "technical analysis", but I don't thin…

I have a bit of experience trading derivatives, but little compared to crypto. Everything I said was specific to crypto only. A crucial distinction between crypto and equities is direct market access. Everyone in crypto gets DMA and API access with a few clicks only. Most of the low-hanging arb fruit is thus already taken or getting harder to take and moving to higher frequencies. There are still low-frequency arb opportunities in crypto, but for many of them the edge is in efficient/safe fiat currency movement across country orders, i.e. having the right citizenships and bank accounts and clearances. In many countries it's not easy to open bank accounts for crypto trading these days.

People often think there are arb opportunities in crypto when there are none because the price already includes the inefficiencies, latencies, and difficulties of moving fiat across country borders or taking money out.

Also, the price often includes the risk of the exchange being hacked or running away with your money, which has happened a lot recently. So when people look at arb opportunities they often don't take into account that these risks must be reflected in the exchange prices. Sketchy exchange prices are lower due to the risk factor of having balances there. That's not the case for regulated financial markets.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#65

Post by luxpir »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #58
divyanthj wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd invite you to try out the platform then. We aren't offering get-rich-quick schemes. We are just providing the tools to create your own. :)

you are providing the tools to do something no sane person should ever do. I agree you can probably find customers who will do it and will pay you for it, but it's a nonsensical activity like buying lottery tickets.

This isn't targeted at competing with billion dollar HFT firms. A trading bot can simply ping you an alert when criteria are met for you to take one trade a month/year. Or it can be more involved. But it's not instant suicide if you try. Tough, but not impossible. It can be as macro as you want, is my point.

To address your analogy, the odds of a trade going in your favour are closer to 1 in 2 than 1 in 14 million. Of course fees etc. apply, so you have to cut losers short and let winners run, but it's not comparable to a lottery. Or a casino before you go there.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#66

Post by rohitgoyal »

daemon_beard wrote: post #20

Are you aware there is a massive (market leading, in fact) trading platform called Murex? The name is rather close isn't it? Is it intentional? Edit: I mean, if I started making say, an operating system and called my company one letter different from another company (mickrosoft? rehhat?)-- who are in the same market and have an enormous reputatation -- I'm sort of asking for trouble, aren't i?

Didn't know about this. Thanks for pointing it out. Mudrex has nothing to do with it. Mudrex came from the Sanskrit word call "Mudra" which means currency. I hope this answers your concern.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#67

Post by mindcandy »

pault wrote: post #41

Sorry this is a bit off topic, but how do crypto traders manage their taxes? I am under the impression that crypto trading doesn't have any of the niceties that traditional securities trading has when it comes to taxes, e.g. only paying capital gains when you remove money from your trading account (maybe that is also incorrect, I have no experience with investing).

dislaimer: I'm not a tax lawyer. This is not advice. etc...

In general, trading crypto is taxed like trading stocks or any other commodity. So, when you trade some coins for something else, at that moment you owe tax on the difference in value between when you received vs. when you gave. Long term/short term capital gains and wash trade timing rules apply.

It gets pretty complicated when you have a trade where you are trading from a batch composed of multiple buys at difference price points in the past. Especially when you have to sort out the cap gains on the exchange fees you paid in crypto.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#68

Post by usgroup »

rohitgoyal wrote: post #52
usgroup wrote: post #44

Are there really people out there who can create profitable automated trading strategies with all that involves, but can’t code? Presumably they can’t test either and arent too hot on maths? Who are these people?!

There are a lot of people who do research using Trading View and optimise algorithms on excel. But they don't know to code and build the whole infrastructure. Thanks for bringing this up.

Not to be a sceptic but you can’t do this ... you can’t optimise algorithms in Excel. I mean you can; you can do whatever you want but what needs to be done is a lot harder than this.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#69

Post by luxpir »

throwawaykyok wrote: post #48
pault wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally naive question: what if you aren't interested in HFT but just want to take some of the manual labor out of making less frequent trades? Is that any less reliable than sitting at your computer watching the order books or do the exchanges already have all the tools you would need for that?

Yes, that's a valid use case for this tool. Exchanges typically don't have this functionality. My opinion based on my personal experience is that it is rather unlikely to build profitable algorithms based purely on "technical analysis patterns": (1) Most of these patterns are pseudoscience, you can google for more info, only a few have even a bit of science behind them (2) There isn't enough data to train a model on…

It doesn't sound like you've thought this through.

Technical analysis isn't typically based on patterns. Banks trade using TA (see Lehman Bros Forex trading handbook - available online) - it's not strange or unusual to trade a mean reversion strategy at HFT or retail trading levels. Nor a momentum strategy, or even trend following. Nobody serious trades the candlestick patterns you're referring to in algo trading.

There is enough data to train all forex pairs - tick data going back decades, for free, via Dukascopy and other sources.

You're spreading FUD, and while there is definitely a need for people to be cautious, your warnings are not based in reality.

Better to warn them about the 70-90% losing rate of all retail traders (reported officially by all UK brokers), or the perils of overleveraging, or the risk of gapping/illiquidity in crypto... I could go on. But not what you mention - that's a strawman.

Re: Launch HN: Mudrex (YC W19) – Automated Trading Without Code

#70

Post by eternalny1 »

throwawaykyok wrote: post #23

What you have built looks great and I am sure a lot of work went into it. However, as someone with a bit of trading experience (running a profitable custom-built trading system myself) who has friends that lost money I would like to post a few words of warning to anyone who believes they can build profitable trading strategies on top of someone else's platform: It's extremely unlikely. While you may hear stories of p…

> Also, ask yourself why someone would offer a platform to build profitable strategies instead of simply trading themselves based on their competitive advantage. The answer almost always is: Because they failed to trade profitably and pivoted to selling their (unprofitable) infra.

This is correct. It's so obvious but most people simply don't see it for what it is.

The interesting thing about these platforms is that they can actually record what OTHER people are doing, see what the successful people do, and possibly just copy them.

Post reply on HN