As question says. Wondering if there are any firms out there that offer their traders free access to build models and backtest. Regards.
AFAIK there is none. I only know of some FX firms/brokers that offer tick data to their clients if their account size is at some specific level. I.e oanda offer tick data to clients with accounts of minimum $1,000 size. Problem is they only offer 4 symbols (4 majors) to download. Not sure if it is still just 4 symbols. But it's tick data since 2004. So that shows that I very much doubt that there are any providers who offer multiple years of tick data from regulated markets just for free.
Kicking around some ideas. Would be better to find an existing group to partner with rather than start from scratch.
Problem is traders are cheap and paranoid. I don't know that they would pay an extra $100-$500/month for access to a (really good) database and historical repository. No idea what the sweet spot would be. On the same token, prop shops are as cheap as can be and don't want to shell out cash for traders unless they are going to make it back 10x. Ideally a service provider to existing prop firms or traders/groups may be better, or a hedge fund style where proven strategies are firm-backed just not on a traditional prop split like most are familiar with. The industry right now is a "capture your own" setting because there is such a lack of trust. The amounts of money traders spend on data feeds plus the programming to capture and the back-end to store and warehouse the data is out of control. We do it as a one-stop-shop for fractions of what data feeds cost. It's a giant leap however, going from a service or data provider to a prop firm/trading sponsor. We have even tossed around the regulatory implications of being a 3rd party backer/lender to provide capital to proven strategies - regardless of the firm. It would essentially be like a loan shark or credit lending agency vs. a true prop situation. Would much rather do that than deal with the trading side of things.
Let me know what you decide on. As I now spend at least 85% of my time chasing around my historical data vendor, live data vendor, and broker to acknowledge/address problems. I'd gladly pay up for a situation where that stuff just "works". My ideal scenario is something like a watered down prop group...a group of independent traders that share infrastructure (likely proximity hosted servers) / data / IT-programmer person to defray costs but don't commingle funds or intellectual property. I know that I could colocate with Lime and a bunch of this stuff would all fall into place but for a self taught programmer the idea of writing my own data handler and smart order router has (thus far) been too scary.
I thought about a similar idea, after all i have the servers and also have the tick data, but the issue is that the seed money all has to come from a single source, so it would be a recovery model and like it was mentioned, most traders are just looking for something for free, so hard to be willing to share...
that can be easily done, and with little regulatory oversight if you would act as a trading group.. if you are the "loan shark", you would merely have sub accounts for each borrower within a master account that would contain the funds they are being "loaned"... you would deduct interest from that account... the issue as i see it, is what happens when they blow out and they owe you $$$, that goes back then to you requiring deposits into the subs from them... anyhow, just me thinking out loud.