Developers building their way up to traders

[ET180]

...hired a staff to do all the programming of what you did and more was much easier than your route to me.

Well, you don't know what I did, what I do, or how much development I have invested in my trading so I don't think you can make that statement. However, I just thought of another reason to learn software...so you don't have to rely on others to implement your strategy...how do you know that you can trust your programmers that you have hired? How do you know that they have not sold your strategy (assuming that it's profitable...or I suppose even unprofitable is good enough to sell if they have some marketing skills) or are even trading it themselves? Or from the software engineer's point of view, try to get hired by a profitable retail trader, get him or her to share their strategy with you, then if it's profitable, trade it in your personal account.

By the way, if anyone has good trading ideas send me a PM. If I think it has potential and if I have extra bandwidth, I'll code it up for free and share it with you. I'm always open to new ideas.

 

[InvBox]

if anyone has good trading ideas send me a PM... I'll code it up for free and share it with you.

LOL

1) no one will share really profitable strategy
2) profitable trader can hire a programmer (NDA paper included)
3) only non profitable trader with the same strategies can share idea by internet

Save your time - forget about poor geniuses.

 

[ET180]

1) no one will share really profitable strategy

Nah, if I only had a few hours left to live, I'd probably give away any secrets that I thought could help others. But aside from quickly impending death, most people probably won't give away secrets to profit.

 

[digitalnomad]

But aside from quickly impending death, most people probably won't give away secrets to profit.

I would, but not for monetary gain. Main reason to retire, and second for ongoing philanthropic efforts when I take a dirt nap.

Have you successfully implemented profitable trading models? PM me if you want to talk about it.

 

[Aquarians]

Having your profitable strategy leaked to a single other person is something of very little damage, if that person is not a cretin. As long as he keeps his mouth shut and trades in his own account, the market is big enough for both of you. Problem's if the guy works for an established business, like a hedge fund or an investment bank and thinks he can advance his career by coming up with his "research". Then it's game over for you and oftentimes the good times don't last long for the idiot either, there's always bigger sharks in the hierarchy who can do to him what he did to you.

I've actually had a candid crook trying to work for me (when I posted an options research job) telling me he's at the same time a highly knowledgeable "quant trader" and currently employed and working for some hedge fund. I really can't fathom what was in the guy's head.

 

[Carlll]

Software developers should work together with traders when possible. Cause they just write programs and it's traders who need to use them afterwards, so there might be some difficulties.

 

[learner2007]

Software developers should work together with traders when possible. Cause they just write programs and it's traders who need to use them afterwards, so there might be some difficulties.

So very true! A case at hand is eSignal. After using eSignal for 8+ years, I cancelled as the project manager who created the current version left the company and from then on what the developers produced completely ignored the needs of the active trader. Without guidance, developers will create a function that take 4 steps, when it could actually be done in 2.

 

[sle]

I've actually had a candid crook trying to work for me (when I posted an options research job) telling me he's at the same time a highly knowledgeable "quant trader" and currently employed and working for some hedge fund.

It would be surprising if anyone truly knowledgeable would care to steal your ideas. You’re a smart dude, but it would take 10 min of reading your posts to figure out that you have no real alpha to speak of at the present.

On topic. On average, my experience with IT people moving into trading seats have been negative. They usually have a tendency to overestimate the value of technology/models and underestimate the value of business knowledge which leads them (makes sense cause that’s what they know). That usually leads them on long goose chases for “perfect solution” instead of concentrating on making money

 

[Aquarians]

"His speciality was alfalfa, and he made a good thing out of not growing any. The government paid him well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce." (Joseph Heller)

 

[Aquarians]

Developers make good money by not growing alpha. And the more shit code they write (alpha they don't produce but needs an AWS subscription, 96 cores and 2 Tb of RAM to process 10 messages per second), the more money management gives to them, which they spend increasing the amount of alpha they don't produce