I'm trading crypto and have had no luck getting my strategies automated. I have profitable point and click strategies, some of which are pretty sophisticated, but no background in programming whatsoever. What is the best way to go forward with this? I've seen platforms such as Caspian and TT but both seem difficult to use for a novice. And I've talked to lots of devs who claim they can program strats for me, though they don't have automated trading experience, and I've even commissioned small pieces of work from them to test how it goes but it's been onerous, expensive and unfruitful. What's the smart way forward?
Have you written down your trading system? If not, then write down your trading system and follow it for a couple of weeks without deviation. As you find issues, update the instructions in your trading system.
Sure there are sited for finding coders ( I'm 1, but try to avoid mixing coding with trading ), shouldn't cost that much. PM me a sample of your rules, see how complicated we are talking ??
Don't be cheap and hire any douche from some banana republic without any trading implementation or Fintech experience. You will never get what you hope you get. But those developers with financial trading implementation experience are not the cheapest. PM me if you want more details. I might be able to help. And don't share any of your trading strategies and strategy ideas with anyone. Nobody needs them to evaluate complexities before being hired unless they signed an NDA with you.
I've tried looking for coding jobs regarding trading before, people still hire the cheapest or have very low offers for relatively complex jobs -- it's not a piece of cake to understand, modify and re-write parts of someone's poorly planned trading code. It's also pretty difficult to become one now as the established ones have reputation and are asking for decent amounts. If you're new, you're expected to work for a burger joint salary.
I've been using an algo trading platform called Capitalise https://app.capitalise.ai/wizard and I absolutely love it. You don't need to know coding or learn any kind of proprietary system to use it - the whole interface is in plain English. You can condition your trades on tons of technical and fundamental indicators and if you want to branch out to assets other than crypto, you can also trade forex and stocks there. Plus, it's free! Oh and if you want to try strategies out before actually running them you can simulate them which I found to be super helpful in deciding which of my strategies to actually put my assets into.
On one hand some people seem to not understand the value of someone not only with coding skills but experience in developing financial applications and knowledge of specific financial APIs. The project budgets of some people are ridiculously low. But on the other hand I also feel the CS industry is way too spoiled and some developers have outlandish expectations. Let's remind ourselves that a 50 dollar per hour salary almost equates to 100k per year in gross income. How some developers justify to charge 100 or sometimes a lot more is only explained by supply and demand imbalances (and I stress here in the context of an average difficult level project in financial space) . There is no intrinsic value in the quality of the code or knowledge that goes into that code that justifies 100 or 200 dollars per hour. It's just that the market pays that amount at times because there are companies and people out there who are willing to pay that price. For me 100k is a justified salary for someone with a graduate school degrree, 5 - 7 years of work experience and 1 or 2 niche areas of specialization, and working on projects online. Hence a justified value for project work even to implement a data science project should be fairly valued at around 50/hr. Anyone who thinks they should be paid more with similar profile use all sorts of excuses to justify their higher ask but in the end of the day have to admit that they can only ask more because the market offers more not because their work is worth more. But then I was introduced to a career coach recently because I am seeking some advice and after an intro at a swanky private members club he mentioned that he can give me a discount at 4000hkd/hr (around 500 usd/hr). I did not choose him for other reasons but felt how ridiculous his asking price was but then that is what he can ask in this city.
What you are not including above in your 100k per year/ 50 per hr metrics is the amount of non billable hours required to land a consulting contract. Depending on the situation, a consultant may only have 1000 billable hours a year. That comes out to $100k per year at $100 per hour. Now throw the need for health care, retire savings, etc and the $100 per hour does not seem that high.