I've been studying (then dropping it all) TA since 16 years old trading an acct with my dad in High School. The expensive lesson was that indicators really are a joke. You need to find out a better way to define situations. For me it is all trial and error. I seem to remember a couple years of ecstasy abuse better than I do calculus. Even though hopefully you find out complex doesn't necessarily mean better in terms of a system. Lets just say at 22 you are as dumb as I was. And I am guessing I have countless more hours of research under my belt. By 22. You like chasing a dream your whole life? The real world of what you are trying to accomplish has the same probability as me getting laid tonight. Not much, if any. But prove me wrong, at least you have that going for you in the short-term as a sad depression like feeling will hover over you sooner or later as nothing seems to work. Or is that just me? haha That is the point where either you just hang yourself in a field or just join the rat race with everyone else. I got some Hyundai parts to sell though in the meantime that say otherwise. GL dude, if you find something that really statistically works make sure and pay it forward And don't forget, my opinion doesn't mean shit and if it did I wouldn't be having this conversation with you. GL
Don't listen to the noise. If you have a guaranteed job in S&T, that's already better than most people. That doesn't say too much about your success down the road but at the very least you have the door open to you. I would imagine that the traders there can teach you a thing or two.
Well, if you know your math it shouldn't be that hard to get into a MFE program. I myself am preparing for the MFE program and brushing up on the prerequisites + incubating my CTA.
I agree. it's a very competitive field. just because you learn to code complex strategies does not necessarily mean they will be successful. but on the other hand some strategies can be coded with minimum effort and programming knowledge while other strategies require more in-depth knowledge. Look how easy they made MQL4.. about time it switched to an C++ object oriented style.
The vantage point of my comments to you are my life experience. As you see from a recent viewpoint designed to be helpful to you, and I quote: "I speak from a trader's perspective, someone, who utilizes the skills of programmers and IT teams. I do not see a single advantage for you to start learning C++ over C#, given you currently do not possess much skills on the programming side. Some pointed it out and I like to repeat: Programming is only a very small component. The large part that is required to get the job done is a deep understanding of the micro-structure of markets and the ability to think outside of the box, to completely distance yourself from all the TA-BS that is out there and come up with new ideas to test and implement." The speaker ID's his situation and his difficulties. I put them in bold italics so you could see the common circumstance of a trader with support from programmers and IT. In my case, I have completed the path and found more than the quoted one feels is the target. Institutionalizing the alternative to common practice is way past testing and implementing new ideas. The thinking mentioned is just a preamble to the real manifestation of performing in an ongoing superior and excellent operation that is wholly functional. Let me answer your question in terms of your going from where you are to where such an operating super team is (the one I mention instead of the intermediate target I quoted). At some age (say 16) a person wakes up and smells the roses. Anything is possible and it is not within arms reach or sight. It is way out there. Going to school helps a person to be able to see farther and have perception as his mind grows in support of being able to have vision. You have decided to fit into a system that operates as commonly described. Here "out of the box" was mentioned by a person "in the box" and having troubles, well defined by their bounds, and just vaccuous in their "idea" nature. Obviously drag and drop of library components is how to put ideas in "out of the boxes" type containers. Nomenclature is the level of the names of snippets and scripts that are used to formulate an out of the boxe super and excellent solution. Doing such paradogm shifts are the result of a person going from A to N. His qualifications are, in part, his formal learning. Added to that is his way of dealing with opportunities. Lastly, he needs to have the personal means to follow through and complete the institutionalizing. To automate money making in the financial industry, is easy and not commonly done. Why is being explained to you. The first step is to acquire a scientific orientation. EE does that. EE focuses on tooling up to deal with materials and things which extend man's performance by the application of energy in large quantities. EE courses give a person the ability to handle larger and larger problems scientifically. All engineering fields deal with about the same set of coefficients and the same set of functions the coeeficients are applied to. Markets are much simpler than systems to which engineering is applied. The EE courses to take are the ones that eal with the basic coefficients and the basic functions. This will enable you to perceive and understand systems and how to make systems work to produce results by carrying out a process. In markets, a system is attached to the market that takes the market's offer. By examining and characterizing functionally, the market, a person can then create an adjoining system in which to poubr what the market offers. You may be able to see easily, that all the pieces for doing both jobs are available. Studing how to assemble the exisiting pieces is what EE courses do perfectly. Getting the programmers and IT team to do the assembly requires YOU to be able to use your EE type acquired skills to "put the pieces together". I use three applications of one model. The model is precisicelt developed down to the granularity of the markets. A pragmatic automation example is taking the offer of the stock markets using individual equities as an example. 3 beta stocks are used and they have a QA criteria to pass. This was putting pieces together. Doing 100 turns a year is how the plumbing is connected to the market. 15,000 stocks are traded in the markets. Only a few hundred can consistently deliver the market's offer all the time at the rate of 100 cycles per year where taking the market's offer is optimum. Capital is rotated in a timely manner to do this (crossover trading). The SEC tags this system as an "insider trading profile". So you take courses that let you design and build a radio. You learn what the pieces do and how their coefficients operate when the functions of enrgy are applied to them. you can see by making the radio you can tune into all the stations and have the information form the station to use in any way you wish. 50% efficiency per trade is 10%. 100 turns per year is the exponent of the compounding. Trading commodities around the world is 50 times more effecient. Doing sector rotation of equities is the big time game sime there is no upper capital constraint. For commodities and for sector rotation there is noting different from trading stocks using their natural cycle. It is just designing an building a different radio to recieve all those different stations. historically cub scouts and boy and girl scouts have built radios. they did design them but if they had gone to tech school or engineering school they could have. It there were one book to read for EE it would have been the RCA Vacuum Tube Manual. The book contained a lot of charts that showed what would happen when verious amounts of energy was applied to one part of the tube to get another amount of energy out of the tube. When I worked at BTL transistors were invented and another book called "The Transistor" appeared. My first job at IBM involved decision on making transistors. I suggested making one kind only. IBM sold the operation to TI and I got to meet Ida Green as a consequence. Maybe you have passed the Ida Green building at Tech. To learn to automate, you learn the piseces. Then you examine the market system. Then you put the pieces together for two purposes: 1. the market operating set of pieces and 2. the pool extraction pieces. Then you interconnect the two systems by using the appropriate filters and gates. The combined systems pump money out of the markets into your accounts at the rate of the market's offer. Learning science in a place that has a lot of pieces lets you learn how pieces work. then you learn how to solve a problem by putting the pieces together. All of this is foreign to the person I quoted. Look closely, that person thinks the pieces come from his brain in the form of new ideas. Try to get it straight. THERE ARE NO NEW IDEAS. All the pieces are there and have been there for centuries. When you create a paradigm shift. You apply the paradigm shift to the problem. In markets, the problem is "taking the market's offer continually" I use three applications" 1. PVT takes the equites market offer of high quality stocks. 100 turns @ 10 annually. 2. SCT takes 3X the daily range in any of about 80 global futures price indexes. 3. SSR takes 4 1/2% as week in a 4 week average cycle. The pieces in a radio are only a few kinds. They are usually either fixed or variable in value. Radios have antennas that provide a low enrgy input. At the other end is somethiung that connect to a human's ears. The human carries to ball from there. Automated trading is simpler. You go the the mailbox and get checks. My post is focussed on the matter of how a person goes from being on the sidelines to becoming equipped to gt the job done. Naturally I put in some comments on personal experience that relate to extracting what the market is offering. Any critical analysis of my comments begins with WHAT THE MARKET'S OFFER IS. Second, it may be worth examining if a scientific deductive approach is spot on or not. iT WILL NOT BE EASY TO DRAW ANY CONCLUSION THAT IS BETTER IF ANY "INDUCTION" IS INVOLVED IN SUCH REASONING. Finally, when anyone comes up with more of the non systemmic contributions, think before you speak. Piecemealling is less than humorous.
it is funny. I started at the bottom of the thread, and the first thing I thought scrolling up and seeing its extreme length was, "that must be hershey's post". I was shocked that I was right