
Would you pay to be able to build your own trading bot (automated system)? - b5er
I&#x27;m curious as to how much you&#x27;d be willing to pay, if at all, for a platform that allows you to automate your trading process.
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AlexAmee
No because there isn't much to automate.

I takes me about 40 hours to do proper DD on a company. It depends if I know
the sector well, if not then even more. The actual trade is just hitting the
sell/buy button.

That's once in a month.

I don't think I could ever automate the DD process.

You can come up with good AI and amazing algos but at the end of the day, a
doctor knows more about the ill person just by looking at him/her for a few
seconds, I feel like it's the same with trading/investing.

If I automate the valuation, I lose the connection to a company and its
numbers. Another example would be insider transactions, there is a difference
how you evaluate insider trading, it depends on the company and its market
cap, the sector, and the management.

I don't even know how I could ever come up with good indicators for those
issues.

Now there are also people who use TA, that's your clientele.

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rayvy
Yes. I personally feel like the trading space is ripe for someone to come
along and kick over everyone's cans. Etrade, Schwab, TD, they all work but --
they're all just so clunky, and early 2000's, and old, and just...just so not
desirable. As a 25-year old professional who doesn't have the time to research
stocks/options, and doesn't want to park his money in an index fund, I
_desperately_ need a MODERN alternative. But sadly there is none (no,
Robinhood is not an alternative, it's a casino in your pocket).

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quickthrower2
Not much. I think there are open source kits out there. Since I would be
risking my own cash anyway, and doing all the config work. Unless you can
provide some proven edge or advantage

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codec01
Yes if it included options. Most trading platforms are only stock, futures, or
forex. Stocks and the like you have to be 100% directional, options on the
other hand give you way more strategies that would be great to be able to
automate from a trading platform. Especially if you had the ability to back
test strategies and update your models over time, and adjust the option
strategies. Or even the ability to combine options with another asset class
like stock, futures, or pairs trading.

If someone created a platform like this with its own scripting language and
REST api it would be like nothing available today.

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hanniabu
Reasons why you would create a new scripting language that nobody is familiar
with rather than using an existing language that at least some people would be
familiar with?

~~~
codec01
I guess I went that direction because Thinkorswim and most other platforms all
developed their own scripting language, but reflecting now I think something
simple that everyone knows like Python or JavaScript lib/sdk would be a better
approach.

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throwawaymath
Are you asking because you're doing market research? If so I would strongly
urge you to reconsider. If you're not doing market research you can probably
disregard most of this comment.

Here are the realities of trading algorithms and trading automation:

1\. Approximately no one trades competently - let alone _profitably_ \-
outside of a trading firm. With very few exceptions the process of designing,
implementing, testing, deploying, monitoring and improving trading algorithms
is not a feasible job for a single person. This is aside from the problem of
data acquisition, engineering and processing. There _are_ people who
profitably trade on their own, but they're typically veterans of a trading
firm looking to grab a larger piece of the PnL on their own book. I don't know
why there is this persistent belief that a lone individual is going to be
automating trading competently - in the past I've compared this to thinking
you could singlehandedly develop and/or maintain half of DuckDuckGo.

2\. The firms which automate most of their trading - and this is increasingly
the default - know how to do it and know how to acquire the talent requisite
for maintaining that core competency. They like to keep things in-house where
possible. They are extraordinarily secretive and don't like depending on third
party infrastructure or tooling unless it's absolutely necessary. You are
probably not going to develop an ultra-sticky product like Bloomberg, Nanex or
kdb. A third party dependency that inserts itself into the risk management,
analysis or execution pipeline is a liability. Moreover the intense secrecy
means you will have difficulty talking to, or hearing from, employees of
actual firms.

3\. This is an incredibly crowded space to try and enter. Many companies have
popped up which market products to firms looking to automate some or all of
their process. They're typically not very successful in this effort for two
reasons. The first is what I already mentioned about secrecy among firms. But
just as importantly it's very difficult to develop a reliable trading process
by hand, let alone to automate it. The customers you want to work with are
savvy and most of the existing products are crap, so you'd need to have a very
strong product and a very compelling case for why yours is different and
useful.

To put this all together for you: by asking this question on Hacker News
you're strongly selecting for answers from people who almost certainly do not
trade professionally. If they believe they are competently and effectively
trading on their own without professional experience, it is most likely
because they have vast unknown unknowns and a limited definition of what
"automated trading" means (for example, they might think they're doing
automated trading because they use the Interactive Brokers API instead of
manually placing orders). You _can_ target that kind of crowd, but if you do
so you're entering the B2C cottage industry of (de facto) day trading
education, not the B2B industry of trading itself. Unless you're attempting to
build a fintech hypergrowth startup like Robinhood you _really_ don't want to
do this in a B2C capacity; then you're optimizing for customers who have both
limited money and limited experience they could use to get any _more_ money.

~~~
marketgod
Anyone can make money in the market. I have 0 experience working at any
financial firm, and I can beat any one of those systems. If you dedicate
yourself to something you can do it.

~~~
throwawaymath
Of course I wasn't talking about _you_. I'm sure _you_ can singlehandedly beat
RenTec, DE Shaw, Two Sigma, Citadel, Bridgewater, PDT, Tower, TGS, Headlands,
AQR and DWR; all without any professional experience in finance. And naturally
it makes more sense for you to work with a vastly smaller amount of capital,
on your own, instead of simply joining one of those firms. After all you
routinely beat their archaic and inefficient systems. You're a walking
argument for active trading instead of index investing! Buffett should check
in with you.

But you have to admit your skill is extraordinary, and I'm not talking about
people like _you_ in my earlier comment. I'm talking about most people, who
cannot do the things that _you_ can do. They probably come easily to you but
you're just gifted with exceptional talent and work ethic. Most people can't
trade profitably even with all the resources of a firm behind them; that you
can do it while making all those other firms look silly is astounding and
remarkable. So please don't feel as though I was downplaying your impressive
accomplishments.

~~~
marketgod
Of course they should, tell them to contact me, I will teach them a thing or
three. My info is in my profile. The issue is they wouldn't give me their
capital because they are scared.

I have come across people who are almost as good as me as well. They don't
work in finance, have no finance experience, but they beat the most of those
brokerages and are self sufficient, and work from home without a boss.

Anyways, there are many people who are doing what I am doing, to think they
are not is not well thought out. Everyone who claims only experts can win are
just not doing themselves a favour and the person listening to them.

I.e. Ignore the noise and get to work. There is money to be made. Just open
your eyes, there is money to be had.

Edit: deleted references to a throwaway account.

~~~
throwawaymath
Take a look at my comment history. This is not a throwaway account :)

And for what it's worth, I don't doubt you at all. Like I said, I fully
believe you are as incredible as you say. But not all of us can so easily
obviate the work of entire firms staffed with hundreds of people employed to
improve their trading results. You should count yourself lucky!

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jjeaff
No, not when I could build my own bot for free with a platform like
quantopian.com.

I believe that if your algorithms perform well enough, you can actually lease
them out to investors.

~~~
jklein11
Quantopian is looking for algo's that compliment their fund. You may have a
strategy that outperforms the market but is highly correlated to an algo
quantopian is already backing.

Your algo is also tied to the quantopian API and data that they provide. I'm
not sure what the effort would be like to port a Quantopian algo to a platform
like Interactive Brokers.

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codegeek
Depends on the outcome. If the automation can ensure that we only sell when
there is a profit even if small while we hold when not, then I may pay for it,
sure.

~~~
kasey_junk
Let me suggest that if they can do that, trolling for customers on internet
boards isn’t their path to profit.

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fcanela
I would pay for the learning process. The price would depend on topic depths.
If you share the lessons titles I would have no problem in giving numbers.

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marketgod
I have started looking down this path where I need something that can do a few
things.

1) I have an account with Questrade, I need to enter the same trades on
Interactive Brokers once I enter on Questrade. Also, I have customers who want
to follow my trades, so if they can hook in and buy and sell at the same time
I do, based on the same account balances, it can work for me.

2) I have a system where I enter if the stock price is > X. I use conditional
orders for this now, so it doesn't really need to be automated, however it
would be nice and would save me time.

3) The exiting is not automated because it's based on market sentiment,
however, I wouldn't want to insert my data into any system that can leak the
data. I could go for something where I put in supports, and instead of placing
a stop order, it monitors the stock to fall under a price, and then stop me
out using a market order. The reason I need this is because I would rather not
have my stops advertised to brokerages.

4) Monitor my profile and alert me when a stock moves 5%,10% using beeps. This
would be read-only. Something I am looking to do already.

The biggest drawback, what happens if the system fails? Are you going to
reimburse me? If I write my own code, it's my own fault. Trusting someone
else's code is hard to do. Also, if something breaks, how fast will it be
fixed?

In the end, what I am doing now is conditional orders with a trailing stop
that I adjust accordingly.

~~~
throwawaymath
For those of you reading this and thinking this person has any idea what
they're talking about, I'd like to direct your attention to their website:
[http://marketgodfathers.com](http://marketgodfathers.com) (as listed in their
profile).

In particular, note that this _titan of industry_ advertises a monthly
subscription service for options trading 1) with absolutely no technical or
nuanced financial terminology, 2) using words like "play" to refer to trading,
and 3) with wealth-centric hype videos from _The Wolf of Wall Street_ and
_American Gangster._

Run, don't walk, from this person's advice.

~~~
marketgod
:) I didn't want to waste more words responding to you, but I had to add three
more sentences. As I said, I am the best. My trolls disappear fast [1].

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/user/marketgodfather/comments/8vm9jt/...](https://www.reddit.com/user/marketgodfather/comments/8vm9jt/rmarketgodfathers/)

