Ask HN: Side projects that are making money, but you'd not talk about them?

I am in EU which limits my options (no pun intended).

1. Degiro is sort of Robinhood counterpart, but it's more expensive, does not have (documented) API and lacks access to US exchanges (for options).

2. Interactive Brokers is a heavyweight that provides API and all the bells & whistles you could ask, but it clearly expects larger accounts. I have 3. ChoiceTrade is available in EU as well, but they refused to provide me API access. Their commissions (for US options) are lower than IB (for I have tried all three of these and decided to use IB. They provide two types of API. I am using a simpler one - "TWS API". It is widely used, so there is plenty of documentation and libraries. Protocol is pretty archaic and you need to run GUI Java-based app which acts as a gateway between your code and their servers, but there are documented ways to hack it for running in headless mode and performance is fine for my use case, so I didn't bother looking any ways around it. Additionally there is a second API, which is using FIX protocol that's "industry standard", but I'm not working in fintech and am not familiar with it / didn't need it so far. My understanding is that you still need to run the same local Java app if going FIX route.

That said, assuming most people here are from US, I would recommend to try starting out with either 1) Alpaca.markets (free, but only supports trading stocks) or 2) TD Ameritrade (both stocks and options). Both have modern REST API that you would expect in 21st century. Might be too limiting for professionals and definitely isn't meant for HFT, but IMO they should be sufficient for people algotrading as a hobby.

I know that there are other services as well, some specifically targeted for algotraders and some people even use reverse-engineered Robinhood API, but I can't vouch for any of these.

I really like the simplicity and whimsical usefulness of this one. Good job

If you do that then you have two problems: the same amount in fees from CA for being a foreign entity operating in that state + the fees of whatever state you formed your LLC/C-Corp/S-Corp/whatever.

There is https://txti.es/ . Additionally, GitHub Gists will render markdown.

My side project at the moment is day/swing trading. I started sometime in early March when I pulled my money out from the stock market and cashed in on some capital gains. Things went to hell shortly after that but I was safe waiting in cash waiting to buy back in.

Because I was sitting on about 220k in cash I decided to look into other ways to put my money to use. I realized I could probably buy massive positions in large cap stocks and scalp small 20 to 50 cents moves that happen all the time and make about $100-$300 on each trade fairly quickly.

What has also helped kicked this off for me was 0 commissions on trades. Before I would have to pay like 7 bucks per trade and even though I can still profit it’s amazing how that small cost each time created resistance in my mind.

Since March, I’ve had $12540 in winning trades and -$4476 in losses, for a total profit of $8063.77, however, probably like 90% of that has been made in the past month alone since I started out cautiously with small trades to see how my win/loss ratio was, and in the past week alone I made a $2620 profit. I am now making bigger trades with $100k+ size positions. On top of that, I’ve already reinvested my $220k cash into long term holdings so I borrow that $100k from my broker (I only have to pay interest if I hold overnight which I never do), this gives me the best of both worlds.

To be honest it all seems too easy. If I just make about $400 dollars profit a day, which is like maybe 2 or 3 successful trades, 5 days a week, that’s $2000k a week, about $96k a year, for something that only takes an hour of my time (I only focus on the first hour the market opens)

For now, I just keep reinvesting these profits into buying more stocks and as my account builds more capital I’ll feel comfortable gradually increasing my position size for day trades to make either quicker more successful trades off of smaller spreads or more profitable ones with the same size spread. We’ll see.

I don’t talk about this because no one would believe it and all the advice I find out there is stuff like “it works until it doesn’t” or “you’ll lose it all...” etc. Fuck it. When I die put my money in the grave.