where do I start

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by Dazuni, Jan 5, 2007.

  1. Dazuni

    Dazuni

    Hi all,

    I am new to this forum; I work in the city in the back office and am developer (programmer) by trade, statistician by training.

    Some of the members in this forum started from on line poker, but I start from on line gaming, I was playing Diablo2, after so many years I started to use bot to do runs. of coz it is a computer games and vs the PC it is easy, no decision is needed, just the same routine. I think I can do with some challenge.

    At work my job is more or less to automate requests, I touch on Bloomberg, SQL, VB6, VBA and VB.net, I am also learning the daddy of programming language C++.

    I thought since I am doing that many automation, I might as well try it on the interesting field of automated trading.

    My study in statistics gives me the basis to do some math it needed in this field, and possibly I can learn advance concepts a little faster as well.

    The question from me is that where do I start? you lot seems to be pretty friendly and I guess may be I can get some help.

    I think I should do things by hand couple of times (on SIM) before automating it on SIM.

    Where can I get a provided to hook on to an on line platform that give me similar function as API from Bloomberg?

    Is there any guide? (there is guides in games’ forum, so that people can read and learn the ropes).

    Many thanks in advance.

    Dazuni
     
  2. doli

    doli

    The simulator available with an IB account seems to be fairly realistic. The API appears to be straightforward. So, I have been thinking about this, too. I'd do a bot for each of:

    1. ema crossovers
    2. opening range breakout
    3. unusual premium at a price spike
    4. exhaustion of buying/selling at a price spike
    5. random trading

    Each of those bots would have a few additional rules:

    1. maximum percentange of account riskable on each trade
    2. maximum daily, weekly and monthly drawdown

    Then I'd let them run and every day review how each of them did. That might yield more advanced bots. A bot that could find intraday trends and turning points would be what I'd eventually want to obtain.
     
  3. (1) You have a near perfect background to be a highly computerized trader someday.

    (2) But remember one thing...
    Automation only increases the productivity of existing manual work.
    So you must have a consistently profitable quantitative, market neutral, "risk arb" strategy that works manually...
    And then you can automate and drive up volume and profits.