Collective2 is one. But why would you want to rent a strategy in the first place? There’s no alpha there and the entire algo-selling industry is a big scam. I can guarantee you they will not provide better risk adjusted returns than the market after renting fees.
WealthSignals.com is such marketplace that connects strategy publishers with paid subscribers. Publishing signals is free for system authors. We have integrations with Wealth-Lab and Quantacula software and have plans to open our API to other software products. -Eugene
Nice to see a little different point of view and a bit of actual quant knowledge. I mostly agree that not many people can produce any alpha, though you may also be missing some points. For example if a trader trading from home has access to real-time tick data on all stocks, futures and forex then are they no longer a retail trader? Though I’m genuinely curious about your view on the difference between using algos vs ”alpha factors that would be profitable for institutional investors”, basically not sure of the difference. Ninja and Meta Trader are thriving companies (?) with thousands of users and there are plenty of other traders writing all types of algos/scripts, with many that could possibly be applied to larger capacity/scale funds and investments. So were you mostly referring to higher frequency, math-heavy, pair, correlation and arbitrage type algos with minimal risk that retail traders cannot touch? Or you also don’t see any room for retail traders to generate alpha with slower algos, say based on 1-minute or longer time frames and with more statistical/chance/momentum/reversion based trading (vs arbitrage, pairs, correlations, etc) And do quants cover all those types of algos? Finally, what’s the prognosis for hedge funds with alpha becoming more scarce due to competition, erosion of opportunities, regulation, risk limits, etc?
I did like at least one strategy on C2 that had clear alpha, selling naked puts on vol spikes. And I believe the guy runs a hedge fund and employs many people, so C2 may be more of a marketing venue for him. While I’ve seen a few more C2 strats discussed on C2 and ET that others liked. Alpha indeed is scarce, but if any retail or semi-pro trader generates alpha then it may end up on C2 because there aren’t many other places where they can be monetized or at least displayed for building track record. At least they may show up there until later moved to a hedge fund.
Sooner or later you will find FIX (Financial Exchange Protocol).There are few brokers that allow using this with small funds, yet there are some. FIX is language agnostic, allows trading on many exchanges/brokers simultaneously, lets you combine algo with ML or anything you wish. Basically this is a big guys standard, but this does not mean only they are able to use it.
It depends... Easiest way is to use Ctrader FIX API, which is offered by many brokers (e.g. ICM, Pepperstone). This is not fully functional FIX so it is not the best way, but the easiest to start. If you are looking for low minimum requirements with ECN/STP access I strongly suggest LMAX (10k USD) needed, they have great spreads and executions. Lowest entry point (500 USD) is offered by FXPIG which is an awesome broker (very underrated for some reason). FXPIG does also offer FIX demo which is very rare and very useful when learning how to FIX. IB does also offer FIX, but they do not support price/quote connection so it close to useless IMO.