How many traders can program themselves ?

C

Casual saturday

I have to say I was surprised when I wasn’t able to find the answer to this question within the archives, so I do apologize if the discussion has already been posted elsewhere...

I am trying to uncover the extent (percentage) of traders who are capable of writing programming code for themselves.

My understanding is that many large firms will have extensive programmers and resources available to write and test code at the direction of their trading desks.

However more specifically, among those traders who are responsible for trading their own books, who are not employed by a large firm, how many of these traders are actively involved in programming to assist in their daily trading?
 
Casual saturday said:
I have to say I was surprised when I wasn’t able to find the answer to this question within the archives, so I do apologize if the discussion has already been posted elsewhere...

I am trying to uncover the extent (percentage) of traders who are capable of writing programming code for themselves.

My understanding is that many large firms will have extensive programmers and resources available to write and test code at the direction of their trading desks.

However more specifically, among those traders who are responsible for trading their own books, who are not employed by a large firm, how many of these traders are actively involved in programming to assist in their daily trading?
More...


Uh all I can do is give you my own stats (rough stats on exact number of traders I know, it's a lot so I don't have it down to the exact number).

I've traded with well over 200 people in my lifetime. I've traded very closely with about 40 of them (meaning spending hours via voice communication, sharing screens and trading entire sessions with).

Out of all those people two of them know how to code. One doesn't even focus on trading as his full time, so maybe he doesn't count. That would mean I only know one successful trader who has been trading for a long time (30+ years) who actually codes his own things without outside help.
 
trdes said:
Uh all I can do is give you my own stats (rough stats on exact number of traders I know, it's a lot so I don't have it down to the exact number).

I've traded with well over 200 people in my lifetime. I've traded very closely with about 40 of them (meaning spending hours via voice communication, sharing screens and trading entire sessions with).

Out of all those people two of them know how to code. One doesn't even focus on trading as his full time, so maybe he doesn't count. That would mean I only know one successful trader who has been trading for a long time (30+ years) who actually codes his own things without outside help.
More...

For that trader that code, what does he codes in and what brokerage firm he is using? For example, is he using c++ on NinjaTrader?
 
vincentnyc said:
For that trader that code, what does he codes in and what brokerage firm he is using? For example, is he using c++ on NinjaTrader?
More...


No, I am sorry neither of the ones I mentioned use ninjatrader, nor is the coding directly transferable to that platform.
 
trdes said:
Uh all I can do is give you my own stats (rough stats on exact number of traders I know, it's a lot so I don't have it down to the exact number).

I've traded with well over 200 people in my lifetime. I've traded very closely with about 40 of them (meaning spending hours via voice communication, sharing screens and trading entire sessions with).

Out of all those people two of them know how to code. One doesn't even focus on trading as his full time, so maybe he doesn't count. That would mean I only know one successful trader who has been trading for a long time (30+ years) who actually codes his own things without outside help.
More...

trdes,

Have to say I'm surprised at how low the number you provided is, although perhaps not as surprised as I would have been before beginning to research.

I suppose my next question is, what do you figure the reason is for this number being as low as it is?

My best guess would be that many successful traders simply don't feel as though they 'need' to learn how to code, thus it isn't worth their time to learn how to do it for themselves.

Following from that, and I don't know if you would have the answer to this, but I wonder if of those traders whom you know, even if they do not code themselves, if they pay, or in the past have paid to have someone help design them programs, algos, tools etc.
 
For me trading and programming go hand in hand in the 21st century. You'd need good knowledge but might survive with basic copy-paste and tutorials.

PS. You should have made the post as a poll.
 
Casual saturday said:
I am trying to uncover the extent (percentage) of traders who are capable of writing programming code for themselves.
More...

#!/bin/bash
echo Hello World

>>>

Hello World

....

Does it count ?

...

#!/bin/bash

# trying to build a kind of dirbuster - Brute force directory discovery.
directory_buster () {

domaine_name_service="${1}"
dictionary_path="${2}"

dictionary_length=$(wc -l < $dictionary_path)

i=0; while [ $i -lt $dictionary_length ];
do
i=$[$i+1];
directory=$(sed "${i}q;d" "$dictionary_path"); # get a directory name from a dictionary
curl -Is www.$domaine_name_service/$directory -L | grep "200 OK"; # check if server is up
if [ $(echo $?) -eq 0 ]; # if server is up
then echo "www.$domaine_name_service/$directory" >> ~/directory_buster.txt; # then note it down
else echo $(($dictionary_length-$i)) "$domaine_name_service/$directory" # else trash it
fi
done
}

directory_buster "$1" "$2"

exit

>>>

www.elitetraders.com/robots.txt
www.elitetraders.com/favicon.ico
...

 
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Casual saturday said:
trdes,

Have to say I'm surprised at how low the number you provided is, although perhaps not as surprised as I would have been before beginning to research.

I suppose my next question is, what do you figure the reason is for this number being as low as it is?

My best guess would be that many successful traders simply don't feel as though they 'need' to learn how to code, thus it isn't worth their time to learn how to do it for themselves.

Following from that, and I don't know if you would have the answer to this, but I wonder if of those traders whom you know, even if they do not code themselves, if they pay, or in the past have paid to have someone help design them programs, algos, tools etc.
More...


One is moderately successful and pays / paid someone to code for him (but he was successful prior to that using other more standard indicators) Note: He had money prior to trading, so started with relative decent funds.


One is extremely successful and started with low amount of funds, particularly considering all the debts he owed and made it from the ground up and now he pays someone to code for him.


So, really only two for that scenario. Which would make four in total.


EDIT: I have no clue why the number is low and this is just my own personal experience, who knows if those numbers translate well percentage wise if you we're to add in a larger sample size.

It's not easy to code, even the coders I know have trouble sometimes getting the program to actually execute what they want given so many different variables. Keep in mind most of them just generate trading signals, they don't use it to automate trades.

Generally speaking from everything I've seen manual discretionary trading blows automated trading out of the water, particularly for low to mid tier (I don't have a lot of exposure to traders trading billions, so I couldn't speak definitely on that)
 
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trdes said:
One is moderately successful and pays / paid someone to code for him (but he was successful prior to that using other more standard indicators) Note: He had money prior to trading, so started with relative decent funds.


One is extremely successful and started with low amount of funds, particularly considering all the debts he owed and made it from the ground up and now he pays someone to code for him.


So, really only two for that scenario. Which would make four in total.
More...

Very helpful trdes, thank you.

Without giving too much away, are you able to shed any light on the type of compensation arrangements these traders have agreed to?

Curious if you will, on the perspective from both sides. (feel free to pm me directly if you'd like)
 
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