Again, same here. My system is always up and running, even when I'm on vacation. I'm receiving alerts and notifications and I can login anytime from anywhere (with respect to have Internet access) to fix any problem, if any. And of course, I have automatic risk management rules in place all the time.
You got the world by the ass my man. You covering expenses with your creation? Did you pick up Java before or after you started trading? Nice work.
Right, that was my understanding of OP’s point. You can fully automate, but you may not leave it unattended. All your risk controls are useless if you cannot get market data or send/cancel orders. So my solution to this is to trade smaller size so that no matter what happens, I should be able to hold positions until I get back.
It depends what you mean by 'fully unattended'. I don't think any system can be fully 'unattended', meaning that you can let it run for month without any intervention. Personally, I don't need to be in front of the screen at all. At the minimum, just check one notification email per day, and one logon per week (to restart the IB Gateway). I'm using pretty tight hard stop loss. So if worst gets to worst, meaning: 1) My system crashes 2) and I have an opened position 3) and I cannot do anytime 4) and the market is against me, my stop loss will gets triggered. And I'm not trading small size (in ET's definition!!!).
I meant position(s) size relative to your total account size. Are you reducing size when you know you cannot have access to the system to repair damage?
When there is something wrong and I cannot access my system, I just cannot trade. I'm not a discretionary trader, so I cannot trade manual.
Sure you can if you have to. You can trade out of position manually, call broker, hedge, etc. I am sure you got a handle on what you are doing, so this is just for the sake of the discussion.
Numbers included in the quote by me. 1. Yes I do. The positive results are far higher than my annual cost of living. The surplus goes into my personal retirement fund. 2. I had a Java programming course during one semester while in university, some 35 years ago. Since then I had not used it, and did not use any kind of programming during my professional life. I "refreshed" my knowledge when I started experimenting with IB's API some 6~7 years ago. 3. Thank you. Edit: only now I notice that this thread is placed in the sub-forum Options. My automated trading is not related to options.
Some random items which come to mind: (*) The software you use is only a tool to reach a higher goal. There are endless discussions about which language is "best" etc. The language does not make money, so I consider these discussions not important. So I don't care that people laugh at me for using Java and not using Python. Java is the language I feel most comfortable with and is the language in which I can describe best the functionality which I want to implement. (*) Money management and risk management are most important. This is what keeps you in business when things move against you. (*) Understanding the instruments you trade and their quirks are important. And these quirks need to be properly handled in software. To avoid things going haywire. Instruments expire (e.g. futures, options), some futures "expire before they expire" (e.g. IB's futures close-out policy for instruments with physical delivery). Exchanges have holidays which differ per country; sometimes they have shortened trading days. Instruments may use a foreign currency, so you'll also need the exchange rate. Instruments have certain trading hours during which they are liquid and others where there is hardly any trading. Which makes that handling time zones properly may become important as well. And so on. (*) Understanding how your broker behaves, and the rules they use, is important. Make sure that you never get close to the boundaries, to ensure that the broker is not stepping in and doing things (e.g. liquidate positions) as those interventions will be unpredictable. Example: I keep close track of my account value and the margin requirements and make sure that I always have a large buffer. (*) When implementing a trading system in software you have to stop at each step and ask yourself the question "what if this step fails?" How should the program behave? Should it stop? Should it take an alternative action? Can it continue? Which failure is minor and only needs to be logged in a logfile? Which failure is that important that it needs to send me a warning email message? As you see: nothing of the above involves the actual trading rules: when to enter and when to exit a position. Each person will have their own preferred trading strategy/ies.