Human Traders Are Trouncing the Machines

[Simples]

I'm no authority on programming matters but I've learned a few things about it (and more so, myself).
I gave up on Excel as the error detection was difficult for anything more complex than straightforward grids was cumbersome, I've become allergic to GUIs as well. That said I still use Excel for one-off tasks or something very rarely used.

For other things, I try to program as much as possible even if it takes more time because I learn things and become more comfortable with the language, in the end it might be faster than filling the grid in Excel.

I can't agree that eliminating bugs related to automation is easy for a professional either. Many of the bugs I've encountered are one-off instances, from changes in software (APIs) or changing regulations or network issues. I can't imagine how I could've prepared for all these problems. Many won't be obvious until many months after the initial run.

Using Notepad++ / geany, as IDEs often hides the complexity one really should want to avoid. If programming is a messy chore, it's not fun. Clear syntax highlighting and black background can go a long way.

Excel is great for aggregating few numbers, but not worth doing anything complicated in (ie. non-linear stuff), that isn't already prepackaged. Excel is great for prototyping simple stuff and VBA can offer some aid what declarative formulas won't provide, but it's truly amazing what the formulas can do really.

Learning can be fun, so good stuff.

The general professional environment for past 20+ years doesn't really provide a good environment for good design & code unfortunately, though depending where you are and how much autonomy you get. API-changes and network issues can be seen as "other people's code", and why many want to go back to simplicity, a UNIX-style philosophy where each tool does one or few bounded actions, and doesn't turn into huge warty monsters over time.

However, bugs aren't evil: They keep people busy maintaining code, sparking new ideas, and is often an accepted business risk. Otherwise businesses would work to iron them out much more, and be much more reluctant to change everything to alienate their users and employees.

Preference may be king though, as it doesn't make sense to do what one doesn't love to do. Doesn't mean there'll never be periods of grind on anything worthwhile, but that it should be worth it.

 

[sle]

Ok, but you have to admit 20+ managers killing it is not a lot in the context of some opinions on this thread that systemic is all that.

I also know plenty of long-short discretionary PM that are thriving. As long as you worked out the "path", money can be made.

 

[schweiz]

for some things I make manual decisions simply because it's easier and there is learning benefit in doing things by hand for a while before automating them.

exactly, sometimes manual decisions are far easier to use. as programming would require a non-proportional effort in regard to the result.

the red marked part is very important in regard to developing tradeplans. the "super intelligent full automating wizards" i know have one huge disadvantage: they "numbercrunch" without understanding the market or having any feeling with how things work. they just change parameters and run the monster again. i told them that for me the thousands of hours analyzing the market and building every piece by hand was not a lost of time. i got a lot of valuable information out of it. in fact that was the key to success as i digged much deeper than most people do.



PS: the idiocy of some people overhere is clearly demonstrated in the next "conversation":

i have seen strategies that could not be programmed by +25 years experienced ICT wizards. the wizards were even not able to summarize what exactly should be programmed in an understandable way to start from. theoretically everything can be programmed. however theory and reality are sometimes in conflict, and reality always wins.

Then those are not strategies but just a lot of guesswork and trades are taken depending how the trader is feeling that day. Excellent programmers can and have programmed everything by now. You just encountered poor programmers or perhaps ones that have no experience in finance.
You're saying the trader cannot explain his strategy, he's either deliberately obfuscating what he's doing in fear of losing his work or he doesn't have a real strategy.

As for d08 point, there are plenty of things that can not be easily programmed and will stay that way for a while. I have yet to see any algorithms for distressed debt traders

d08 LIKED the last posting which is exactly telling what i told! so when i post it he calls it BS and when SLE posts it he likes it! d08 has clearly some kind of problem (mental, psychological, unability to read what is written or anything else).

 

[Simples]

exactly, sometimes manual decisions are far easier to use. as programming would require a non-proportional effort in regard to the result.

the red marked part is very important in regard to developing tradeplans. the "super intelligent full automating wizards" i know have one huge disadvantage: they "numbercrunch" without understanding the market or having any feeling with how things work. they just change parameters and run the monster again. i told them that for me the thousands of hours analyzing the market and building every piece by hand was not a lost of time. i got a lot of valuable information out of it. in fact that was the key to success as i digged much deeper than most people do.

Good points, except calling people idiots over an internet forum!
Maybe your points just didn't come across, or maybe your nick reminds people of Scheisse or something?
Being overlooked like that is very common in professional settings, for both genders.

 

[d08]

exactly, sometimes manual decisions are far easier to use. as programming would require a non-proportional effort in regard to the result.

the red marked part is very important in regard to developing tradeplans. the "super intelligent full automating wizards" i know have one huge disadvantage: they "numbercrunch" without understanding the market or having any feeling with how things work. they just change parameters and run the monster again. i told them that for me the thousands of hours analyzing the market and building every piece by hand was not a lost of time. i got a lot of valuable information out of it. in fact that was the key to success as i digged much deeper than most people do.



PS: the idiocy of some people overhere is clearly demonstrated in the next "conversation":










d08 LIKED the last posting which is exactly telling what i told! so when i post it he calls it BS and when SLE posts it he likes it! d08 has clearly some kind of problem (mental, psychological, unability to read what is written or anything else).

Because I can change my mind, as anyone should when presented with an opinion by someone who knows what they are talking about. You demonstrated early on with your "only losers have 5 losses in a row" comment that you don't really know all that much. Hurling insults on top of that like a child.
He just has much more credibility than you, simple.

Many of these "super intelligent full automating wizards" you hate so much understand the market also very well, they can do both sides. It again tells me that you've just been working with not that talented people or people who have no interest in the markets.

 

[d08]

Using Notepad++ / geany, as IDEs often hides the complexity one really should want to avoid. If programming is a messy chore, it's not fun. Clear syntax highlighting and black background can go a long way.

Excel is great for aggregating few numbers, but not worth doing anything complicated in (ie. non-linear stuff), that isn't already prepackaged. Excel is great for prototyping simple stuff and VBA can offer some aid what declarative formulas won't provide, but it's truly amazing what the formulas can do really.

Learning can be fun, so good stuff.

The general professional environment for past 20+ years doesn't really provide a good environment for good design & code unfortunately, though depending where you are and how much autonomy you get. API-changes and network issues can be seen as "other people's code", and why many want to go back to simplicity, a UNIX-style philosophy where each tool does one or few bounded actions, and doesn't turn into huge warty monsters over time.

However, bugs aren't evil: They keep people busy maintaining code, sparking new ideas, and is often an accepted business risk. Otherwise businesses would work to iron them out much more, and be much more reluctant to change everything to alienate their users and employees.

Preference may be king though, as it doesn't make sense to do what one doesn't love to do. Doesn't mean there'll never be periods of grind on anything worthwhile, but that it should be worth it.

I don't use IDEs myself, just EditPlus (Notepad++ alternative) with a dark gray background and of course syntax highlighting as you mentioned. I enjoy the simplicity of it all.

Coding something that takes a while might not be efficient time wise but as I said, it develops your skills and I believe also makes you mentally sharper. I'm a self starter or autodidact if you will, so everything I've learned is by building something, learning everything as I go.

I agree that everything is getting bloated, even with relatively simple modules you have dependencies that have dependencies that have dependencies - if one thing break, it all breaks and debugging can be a nightmare.
I shouldn't whine too much though, we can do amazing things these days with relative ease and very little time spent. Back in "those" days, most of the things you'd build nowadays in a few days were a many months long projects, not that great.

 

[Chuck Krug]

I would like to make a remark, from my own experience: 'Quantitative' used for marketing purposes.
1) My ex colleague, who bought algorithmic entry signals from a third party. And he marketed himself as an algo trader to his clients. And he executed manually and I'm pretty sure these signals were just MA crossovers or MACD based. (He actually was a decent trader who wasn't too greedy and made money for his clients though)
2) A fund that markets itself using state of the art proprietary quantitative models that I'm pretty sure can be replicated using a decent stockscreener.

 

[volpri]

I would like to make a remark, from my own experience: 'Quantitative' used for marketing purposes.
1) My ex colleague, who bought algorithmic entry signals from a third party. And he marketed himself as an algo trader to his clients. And he executed manually and I'm pretty sure these signals were just MA crossovers or MACD based. (He actually was a decent trader who wasn't too greedy and made money for his clients though)
2) A fund that markets itself using state of the art proprietary quantitative models that I'm pretty sure can be replicated using a decent stockscreener.

ROFLMAO

 

[SunTrader]

This month's Modern Trader Magazine has a funny guest editorial - Revenge of the humans

which begins with:

"How ironic that Bloomberg is reporting that most of the Quant strategies adopted by assets managers aren't generating any quantifiable positive returns, let alone alpha. Allow me to explain in a moment of schadenfreude.

For years I've listen to tedious, unproven projections and inflated rhetoric about the promise of big data, quantamental strategies, roboadvisors, machine learning, web scraping, and artificial intelligence."

and ends with:

"Corporations are not people. And neither are computers. SIRI is not your friend, and your Japanese sex bot is not your wife. It's not cutting edge to stick your hand inside a puppet and then let the puppet tell you what to do."

 

[schweiz]

https://elitetrader.com/et/threads/...eign-firms-on-edge.312550/page-4#post-4528522"]China's robot revolution has foreign firms on edge