Most persons think they have unique strategy or idea - time proves there are much more talented people every where having much better ideas or strategies. I would add when you start programming - you see only .01% of whole picture. Save time - use a programmer in your town and move on. Nothing is more important than saving time. Use programmer to further improve and fine tune your own strategy, if you are open to that. My 2 cents.
Like any other business , the only thing you have is the NDA and trust. First, do not use any programmer outside USA (Indians are popular) where you have not legal recourse to legally protect your NDA. Second, programmers are people trying to make a living just like you. Most (includng me) are not evil or out to get you. Third, (someone said this) trust is a large factor. If you do not trust the prgrammer, do not use him. Four, you want a programmer than can speak your langauge. Do not get a programmer that developes in the medical field and does not know what an inside quote is .... The programmer will need to know most of your strategy so it can be developed, tested and released. There is really no much you can do about it. As a trader you are basically running your own business. So as any business you will need good people around you. Unless you are on the mafia, all you have is legal recourses to protect you intellectual property. The best thing for you to do is find someone you trust. If you are making money and paying your programmer accordingly then your relationship will be a long one. At then end you both will profit from it. For example, I am a professional programmer entering day trading fulltime. I do have the ability to build my own tools, auto-trading processes, etc.. I do not have defined strategies and it is my biggest risk right now. If I were to find successful trader(s) to work together, I would jump on it. The trader(s) can worry about what they do best, and I'll worry about what I do best (programming) and it would be a perfect and long relationship. I hope this helps ...
There is really no way to protect your strategy. You could have your programmer program you a skelton and then add the logic to the strategy yourself.
Or instead of compartmentalizing, make him programm something way more complex than what you really intend to use (more indicators, conditions, etc.), with a way to activate / deactivate each of them.
I think the question is simple. If you do not make money there is nothing to protect. If you make money, you do not care if someone else also makes money. Be happy for them. First of all, concentrate on making money, which is already difficult enough, all the rest is irrelevant. Tommaso
I agree with the previous poster... there are enough uber-paranoid people in this business as it is, we don't need anymore. trading is very personal, so even if you have a system that makes billions it doesn't mean someone else would be comfortable trading it. if you collaborate with someone and the give and take is 50-50, then yeah you have a partnership and you're better off together than alone. everyone thinks that automated strategies have to be uber protected bc it's so easy to steal them and trade them... I started out for a commodity trader who trading $1.6BB and lived his life in fear of somebody taking his 756KB trading exe. please don't follow his bad example. there is no shortcut, if you steal somebody elses idea you won't have the confidence to stick with it when it's hard... or the knowledge of how best to improve it. finally... sharing is caring!
I am a old programmer that don't wqnt to program any more so I break my system up into multple part and use http://www.rentacoder.com/RentACoder/default.asp