Super fast trading - all automatic

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by trillenium, Jan 17, 2004.

  1. prophet

    prophet

    I have spent a few years working on systems exactly like what you describe, except that my indicators, networks and rules operate per-tick and incorporate T&S and depth information for added flexibility over bar-based or pure-price methods. However, this comes with a performance penalty, especially for searching indicator parameter spaces. Core routines have to be coded in C.

    This isn't easy by far. Indeed modern PCs have more than enough CPU power to discover and test highly sophisticated quant systems. Just don't let this fact fool you into jumping into more complexity than you can understand (intuitively) or search (computationally). You will probably find profitable, sophisticated market inefficiencies. Yet because of the sophistication, you may get locked into something that is a computational nightmare, or too dark of a black box that you can't understand, generalize and develop as easily.

    I made this mistake early on. I pursued systems that eventually could vector-forecast a block of 5000 most-liquid US stocks out to 4 weeks into the future. Although this sounds amazing, the drawdowns were not low enough for me to trade personally, and the computational and data infrastructure, data scrubbing burden was too time consuming and expensive to continue development, at least working alone. I now work on much leaner, simpler and easier to understand single-market systems that trade ES, NQ and 6E. I still seek cleaner data for the multi-stock forecasting systems.

    Indeed rolling train/test periods are essential for final validation of a system. However it is often helpful to explore low-level indicators or models without rolling periods. This saves computation time and avoids getting biased by the particular train/test period lengths.

    One major challenge with adaptive methods is the problem of distinguishing between truly causal and seemingly causal relationships due to insufficient data, too many degrees of freedom, or more generally, lack of statistical significance.

    The best solution I've found for insufficient statistical significance is this... Avoid big networks or iteratively-trained neural networks unless you can demonstrate profitability on fewer degrees of freedom, and have a good handle on convergence. It is better to linearly balance individually-profitable elements than subtract or multiply two elements that are unprofitable on their own where the difference "happens" to be profitable. It's better to start with smaller networks, single or multiple regression over a few inputs, or simple correlations. See what the simple analysis says before adding complexity.

    Good luck!
     
    #101     Jan 30, 2004
  2. Oh man... Music! Could you record 70 minutes of your talk and send me the CD please? :D
     
    #102     Jan 31, 2004
  3. abogdan

    abogdan

    I have received a couple of PMs and nave been surprised by how many people are actually interested in high level Robotic Trading Systems (RTS). I guess the level of sophistication of your average trader has gone significantly up since I started my work (13 years ago). It is very refreshing. The only thing that I would have to say here is a word of caution:

    As I said, it took me 13 years of slavery and app. 7 million dollars to get to where I am right now. It wasn't easy! I appreciate and support any enthusiast of RTS, but it would be awfully wrong if I did not tell you the truth: If you don't have resources to build the RTS it will crash you, as it almost destroyed me! .

    The good news though is IT CAN AND DOES WORK!

    Unfortunately, I can't really disclose the methods we use (company policy) but I think I can give you a hint: Its variable, self-adjustable time compressions that made it finally work.
    So, please don't get discouraged, work, you might pull it off! And if you do, you'll understand what I feel like right now! It’s the best time of my life!
    Cheers,
     
    #103     Jan 31, 2004
  4. happen outside of USA market hours?

    meaning is it automatic and pegged to bigger markets

    whether inside or outside USA?
     
    #104     Jan 31, 2004
  5. abogdan

    abogdan

    No, what I meant is the time compression is adaptive to integral sizes of trading issues. In other words, all the indicators and trading rules do not have constants in them (length, percent etc). Those parameters are functions of the trading intensity.
     
    #105     Feb 1, 2004
  6. Know of an open ended model fully functional ,which will PUT UP THE NEEDED capital as well. If anyone has a proven method needs capital and a working system which is run on an API PM me.
    Chow
     
    #106     Feb 1, 2004
  7. abogdan

    abogdan

    Well, we did scale it up. Guess what, the system increased its profitability despite all the modeling we did! I'm still trying to get my head around this fact. Our estimations were showing us that due to reduced amount of fills the returns should be less. Well, totally opposite thing had happened. Bizarre! We are going to increase the volume again in two weeks. We'll see.
    Cheers,
     
    #107     Feb 25, 2004
  8. Didn't you know, they used to do it on Mars for many years before it became popular in Germany? Glad to hear our Abogdan is definitely going to ramp up in about 20 days. If you're not automated yet, Fasten your Seatbelts!

    :D
     
    #108     Feb 25, 2004
  9. abogdan

    abogdan

    I was born on MARS, what are you talking about! :D :D
     
    #109     Feb 25, 2004
  10. How come then you got beaten by those Germans!

    :D
     
    #110     Feb 25, 2004