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Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

henrikwarne.com

91–100 of 149 posts

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#91
post #77

I always wonder if this space hasn’t been entirely cornered by HFTs. Isn’t it futile as an individual?

For an individual - HFT isn't all that accessible. Fees gonna kill ya. But yeah - you just zoom out a little bit and work from there.

Well, latency/capital required to lower it gonna kill ya too. Fees are an issue like the blinds in a pro poker game that you don't have the access to our buy-in for either.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#92
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works, but do not expect huge returns. I have worked on multiple strategies. - Strategies using technical indicators do work, but you have to reasonable. If you find these giving higher than expected returns, or too many consecutive wins - take the money. Stop live trading and continue dummy trading - eventually there is a point where you can start live trading again. The thresholds will be determined from backtes…

I do similar stuff and confirm most of the above. It matches my experiences. The only other thing I'd say is that if you're in a bull market you may have easy wins. Then after -- when the market turns against you -- these will evaporate. So long term you have to ask yourself if you are REALLY beating the market. If you'd bought Amazon or Microsoft instead, over 20 years you'd probably be far ahead.

> If you'd bought Amazon or Microsoft instead, over 20 years you'd probably be far ahead.

And if you'd bought pets.com, or webvan, you'd be far behind. Survivor bias at work.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#93
> good example in the book explaining why a tick size is needed. > Say that the current bid in the market is $20. If you want to buy at that price, you will be placed last in the list of orders. But since the sorting order is first by price, then by arrival time, you could get first in line by putting in an order with a price only slightly better than $20 (say $20.00000001).

I don't buy the argument.

Removing tick (or at least reducing it 100x) would put more emphasis on price discovery instead of speed.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#95
post #35

Is there a more socially unproductive, legit practice than this?

Many things, I'd argue. Meat industry causing animal suffering. Social media, tobacco, fast food industries causing human suffering. Oil and gas industry causing environmental destruction. What direct suffering does algorithmic trading cause? It would take quite the narrative spin to argue that it's as bad or worse as one of the above industries.

You are syphoning revenue from a diverse cast of multi-ethnic CEO's that could use that revenue to enrich their communities.

They won't, but they could. They totally could, and you are ruining that possibility.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#96
post #68

is this the same as 'quant trading'? I heard fresh outs who got offer from quant-trading companies making like half-million a year before their bonus.

The term "quant" has many meanings. Originally it used to mean "quantitative", as opposed to "qualitative". It is a type of investment strategies where you target to be right "on average". Once you are right, say, 51% of the times, you aim to reach this asymptotic behavior by trading more and more. Either horizontally (trading more stocks) or vertically (trading more often). You want to keep the law of large numbers…

[deleted]

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#97
Not sure why a simple book review has so many upvotes.

A couple years ago I read all I could on this and started systematic trading on crypto. Ended up with the best results on a public platform and ran a small trading operation with a few clients, one a crypto market maker. It's really hard due to all the market unknowns, stress and psychology/emotion. After the FTX debacle I lost ~35% of capital. Currently put it on pause and back software engineering.

Had to rebuild my asset allocation system which was based on FTX api. Improved it to be realtime and using Binance api. There's still the counter party risk-Binance could get busted or USDT fraud.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#98
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works, but do not expect huge returns. I have worked on multiple strategies. - Strategies using technical indicators do work, but you have to reasonable. If you find these giving higher than expected returns, or too many consecutive wins - take the money. Stop live trading and continue dummy trading - eventually there is a point where you can start live trading again. The thresholds will be determined from backtes…

I do similar stuff and confirm most of the above. It matches my experiences. The only other thing I'd say is that if you're in a bull market you may have easy wins. Then after -- when the market turns against you -- these will evaporate. So long term you have to ask yourself if you are REALLY beating the market. If you'd bought Amazon or Microsoft instead, over 20 years you'd probably be far ahead.

> The only other thing I'd say is that if you're in a bull market you may have easy wins. Then after -- when the market turns against you -- these will evaporate.

If your algotrading profits depend on market being bull or bear, you're doing it wrong. Volatility matters, not the direction.

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#99
post #85

Anyone here making real money from algo trading? I'm talking about people who write their own software rather than working for a company that does it professionally. I'd be interested to hear any tips or pointers on what strategies you've found that work.

I started off doing it on my own back in 2008 with nothing more than an Interactive Brokers account. Then I went all in and started a company to do it professionally around 2012. As far as strategies go, I've said it here before, but all my strategies are quite simple and straight forward. The difficulty is almost always the execution. Almost all of my strategies are arbitrage or market making, and some of them trade…

As someone dabbling with the topic, I would love to chat with someone that made the step to run your own firm. Are there any good groups to meet others? Would you be up for a Videochat coffee?

Re: Algorithmic Trading: A Practitioner’s Guide

#100

Anyone here making real money from algo trading? I'm talking about people who write their own software rather than working for a company that does it professionally. I'd be interested to hear any tips or pointers on what strategies you've found that work.

You're way, way better off finding a small outfit of motivated people to join if you want to work in this field.

Success rate for newly formed hedge funds is probably something like 50% over a 5 year horizon. For solo traders, it's probably closer to 1%.

There is WAY too much stuff you need to be on top of, if you want to be successful, than a single person can manage. It's about as feasible as starting a one man (coal) mining operation, where you must dig the tunnel, extract the coal, process it, sell it, manage the business operation and retain your sanity. You need at least a handful of people to be effective, all with different specialties.

...not to mention that if you're successful as a solo trader, you could be making 10x more with proper financial backing. If your strategy is returning 25% annually on a personal 1 mil investment, there's a good chance it'll still be returning >20% on a 10 mil investment (once you get to 100 mil or into the billions, your returns start to diminish due to market impact). Find a good backer, they'll literally give you money and a support team for a piece of the profit.

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