Why do you even care about me and spend time during market hours writing long abstractions about how clueless I am and how I don't want it bad enough? Maybe you're right, maybe you're not. The fact is that you know nothing about me and you should stop taking an interest in me and my life. I'm not interested in learning from 'whomever', but I have communicated with traders that I believe to be successful and most of them are by a far margin both polite and humble without a need to be condescending or confrontational.
which then begs the question: What are you doing here then if you have some sweet, humble guys surrounding you who feed you with honey? Why not take it someplace else if you have no interest to solicit answers, critical, supportive, arrogant, humble...well, you are probably right, sounds like a complete waste of my time. It sounds like you must love the person just to consider learning from him/her. Funny.
Choose what's important to you. Only you can decide. Unless HFT destroys the markets, it will still be here when you decide to come back. Not if, but when. The draw will be too strong... And programming will always be around. You'll be able to capitalize on your previous experience plus whatever new things you've learned in the intervening time. But be willing to tinker around. Knowledge and progress is made in bits and pieces. And don't forget to start paying attention to the world around you. It'll help you spot trends, opportunities, and obstacles to avoid. Do it long enough, and you'll probably come to realize that the big $$$ is in strategic trading, not day trading. In seeing the bigger picture, yet understanding how the parts fit together. And knowing what the proper course of action is. Us older folks often wish we'd started at 20 what we're doing now. However, looking back, at 20, I was young and dumb, and wouldn't have the benefit of life experience and the wisdom/knowledge gained since then. Nor the appreciation or patience or willingness to consider differing options, ideas, or opinions... Youth is wasted on the youth, but experience is wasted on the old with too little energy... You can put people like CalVol on ignore, found in the "Your Account" menu heading on the upper right.
Thank you very much, good sir. Very helpful. Contrary to what some people believe, I have actually learned a thing or two in this thread and I'm thankful to all who replied. And I agree that the pull will be too strong. After some absence, I'm feeling it strongly already, but I may not go back to day trading. My glory days was after all as a swing trader. Best regards.
What 2rosy said! LaissezFaire, IMHO Python is a great language to learn - both as a tool in the process of learning programming, and as a programming language and platform by itself in the end (.
I second that! LaissezFaire, IMHO, Python is a good programming language and platform, both as a learning step, and as a tool to solve real problems. Then after you've wrapped your head around the whole programming concept or paradigm, it becomes relatively easy to pick up other programming languages ("dialects") if and as needed. Once you're a "proficient programmer" the possible applications are pretty much endless (only limited by one's imagination ?), so I'm only going to quickly scratch the surface here.. As I'm sure you know more and more software applications (including trading platforms) nowadays expose some form of scripting language or another, usually domain-specific (from e.g. Excel macros to writing custom trading indicators or automated trading strategies in e.g. TradeStation EasyLanguage), to provide some level (ranging from light to heavy) of customization or automation to the user (well.. programmer). At the other end of the spectrum it is possible to "code" whole applications, with or without graphical user interface, fully tailored to *your* specific requirements, so for example your very own trading platform or even fully automated trading "bot", interfacing with data feeds and broker via their "API" (using functions they provide to communicate with their end of things). Any kind of data processing, scientific data analysis and solving complex mathematical problems, ... But of course only you can tell if you could some or all of that, be it as a computer user in general, or as a trader. I think you'll find knowing programming useful in one way or another in your life and career eventually. Good luck with your studies. a few links: (homepage) PANDAS library for Python (video) Time Series Data Analysis with pandas (video) Data analysis in Python with pandas (video) 2012 PyData Workshop: Data Analysis in Python with Pandas
Interesting. You seem to be the first person in this thread with that viewpoint? Here's the curriculum for my first course by the way. It's written by my professor who will also be lecturing: http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Pr...TF8&qid=1376735082&sr=8-1&keywords=langtangen
I made my first program yesterday: one line of code! Hey, it's a start. And yes, it executed very well.
WTF!!!!! For this nut job I wasted my time, even a single line of advice to this guy was not worth it. And to keep it to a minimum I am out of here, and hopefully better learned to read nut cases.
I wrote this previously. It'd be a big enough challenge for you at this point. Give it a try. I used Perl. But it's easily doable using Python or Ruby or even PHP. http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3806660#post3806660 Later on, if you continue to maintain your own data infrastructure, you can ease things greatly by getting a subscription to eoddata.com and download things in one swoop instead of retrieving 7200+ pages from Yahoo. Also, don't forget about that website I posted earlier for Java and Python programming lessons. And if you get stuck, you can find any answer via Google. The results will likely lead you to either the language docs or StackOverflow.com