Removing the golden handcuffs

I have a had a good second week working on my project. I found lots of strategies that would perform well over a particular slice of the time series only to falter on another slice. So far I have found about 15 intra-day ES strategies worth trading. These 15 strategies were found and tested on one slice and then tested on two other slices of data with all three slices combined going back to 2000. I am going to wrap up analysis on ES for now and then move to analysis of NQ, ZN, CL, GC and SIL. None of the strategies I found are below the 15 min time frame. Also, all of my strategies incorporate the daily time frame and sometimes a secondary higher time frame.

I am going to go on vacation for a couple of weeks next week but when I get back I am going to:

- Create a short video demoing my platform and will post here.
- Attempt to integrate my strategies with AlgoTerminal (going to have to support over 100 concurrent strategies).
 
traderslair said:
why would you ever want to sell code that makes money for you?
doesn't make any sense to me.
good luck anyway
More...
Totally agree!
When you create a winning formula you only have yourself to contend with.
When you share something with the public, it creates a myriad of new issues.
 
traderslair said:
why would you ever want to sell code that makes money for you?

doesn't make any sense to me.

good luck anyway
More...
I will not be selling my strategies that I find with the platform. I will though be licensing the platform and offering accompanying professional services. If I had a 7 figure trading account I would likely just use the technology for myself. Until I do, I have a family to feed.
 
fan27 said:
I will not be selling my strategies that I find with the platform. I will though be licensing the platform and offering accompanying professional services. If I had a 7 figure trading account I would likely just use the technology for myself. Until I do, I have a family to feed.
More...

I will just share some simple maths I came to at some moment, when I decided not only to trade but also to develop products for other people.

Let's make an optimistic assumption that you have $10,000 in your trading account. You are also a good software developer who can develop great tools as well. Let's set the price of this imaginary product to $100. The market isn't "hot" but you can make at least a single sale per day if you set this exact goal and be really focused on product marketing and sales until you make it. I tried this "one sale per day" approach in all my previous businesses, it works great. You can make 2,3,10 sales if you set this exact goal but I will start with the lowest number, just to be clear. You can also increase this number by 1 each year, as you earn more customers, reputation, traffic and affiliates.

So, you have 2 options: either use your software development skills to create some internal trading system nobody else will use or do the same but also sell the system on top of your trading success. Let's find what you will get at the end.

I will assume that you don't need to spend any money you earn along the way. If you take them into account, the difference will be even more devastating.

1. Hiding your system from others will grow your account at a rate you can achieve with trading. Let's assume that it's 100% per year. It's HIGHLY optimistic, I will never bet that somebody can get such huge returns in the long run. Buffett did about 2 times less, by the way.

In this over-optimistic scenario you will get what?
- $20,000 in a year
- $40,000 in 2 years
- $80,000 in 3 year
- $160,000 in 4 years
- $320,000 in 5 years
- $640,000 in 6 years
- yeah! $1,000,000+ in 7 years

2. Don't hiding your system but rather use it as an extra way to grow your account. It has the highest reward/risk ratio as well, if you think deeper about it. What you will get in this case?

I will write down numbers as [trading account at the end of the year] + [annual profit from sales] = [total]
- $20,000+$36,000=$56,000 in a year
- $112,000+$72,000=$184,000 in 2 years
- $368,000+$108,000=$476,000 in 3 years
- $952,000+$144,000 = $1,000,000+ in 4 years

It's 3 years less, if you we are talking about this simple final goal. Are you ready to trade 3 years of your life for not sharing tools you develop and use? You may also notice that you will get comparable profits from trading and sales in first few years.

From a software developer point of view, "not sharing" means that nobody else will ever see products you created. It's like a painter who decided to paint for himself. Sounds crazy, isn't it?
 
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MaxPastukhov said:
I will just share some simple maths I came to at some moment, when I decided not only to trade but also to develop products for other people.

Let's make an optimistic assumption that you have $10,000 in your trading account. You are also a good software developer who can develop great tools as well. Let's set the price of this imaginary product to $100. The market isn't "hot" but you can make at least a single sale per day if you set this exact goal and be really focused on product marketing and sales until you make it. I tried this "one sale per day" approach in all my previous businesses, it works great. You can make 2,3,10 sales if you set this exact goal but I will start with the lowest number, just to be clear. You can also increase this number by 1 each year, as you earn more customers, reputation, traffic and affiliates.

So, you have 2 options: either use your software development skills to create some internal trading system nobody else will use or do the same but also sell the system on top of your trading success. Let's find what you will get at the end.

I will assume that you don't need to spend any money you earn along the way. If you take them into account, the difference will be even more devastating.

1. Hiding your system from others will grow your account at a rate you can achieve with trading. Let's assume that it's 100% per year. It's HIGHLY optimistic, I will never bet that somebody can get such huge returns in the long run. Buffett did about 2 times less, by the way.

In this over-optimistic scenario you will get what?
- $20,000 in a year
- $40,000 in 2 years
- $80,000 in 3 year
- $160,000 in 4 years
- $320,000 in 5 years
- $640,000 in 6 years
- yeah! $1,000,000+ in 7 years

2. Don't hiding your system but rather use it as an extra way to grow your account. It has the highest reward/risk ratio as well, if you think deeper about it. What you will get in this case?

I will write down numbers as [trading account at the end of the year] + [annual profit from sales] = [total]
- $20,000+$36,000=$56,000 in a year
- $112,000+$72,000=$184,000 in 2 years
- $368,000+$108,000=$476,000 in 3 years
- $952,000+$144,000 = $1,000,000+ in 4 years

It's 3 years less, if you we are talking about this simple final goal. Are you ready to trade 3 years of your life for not sharing tools you develop and use? You may also notice that you will get comparable profits from trading and sales in first few years.

From a software developer point of view, "not sharing" means that nobody else will ever see products you created. It's like a painter who decided to paint for himself. Sounds crazy, isn't it?
More...
Hmmm, so while selling a product and dealing with myriads of customer issues you are trading with full focus?
LOL
 
themickey said:
Hmmm, so while selling a product and dealing with myriads of customer issues you are trading with full focus?
LOL
More...

You are absolutely right :)

If you are curious, you can take a look at my profile to find that I faced the same exact problem. My solution was to give up on trading and focus on product development. It may be not the best choice for a person addicted to trading but I'm more addicted to coding. Maybe I missed great opportunities, who knows?

It's not about facing customer issues, it's about my personal preferences. I would prefer to develop something rather than watching charts and taking risks. I was sure that I can do both when I came here but I was wrong. You may call it "the lack of research" but I had no clue about it until I actually tried. My initial plan seemed like a heaven for a software developer: "Trade proftitably, organize and automate my own work, develop and sell products I personally use to make money, make my customers happy and make even more money out of it".

It didn't work out as I initially expected, but I'm not disappointed. I'm happy to focus on product development and I see that people like what I do more than if I shared my trading success/failures :) I feel that I'm doing the right job.

This decision also enabled me to focus on what my customers' needs, not on what I think is right or wrong. I no longer try to enforce my own view of the market, my personal trading ideas or methods. I'm just following other people ideas, giving them what they requested. It's not "me" who develops the product, it's my customers. I'm just a servant and I'm OK with it. "Being creative" doesn't mean "being creative from the beginning to the end". I can still be creative in details, in implementation, in algorithms and interfaces.

I came into the software business in my early 20th for freedom, to become my own boss. I was an active member of a software vendors' chat in the past, where we invented a self-explanatory abbreviation: "BYOIB" - "Being Your Own Inadequate Boss". I'm not sure that I'm able to translate its meaning correctly, but just imagine a shareware developer getting rid of the corporate world to create the same in his own company for himself. The same meaningless tasks, the same unrealistic deadlines, the same "corporate culture" and all other BS.

While I'm developing what other people requested, I know that they actually need it. It's not what a project manager just invented during a short brainstorm, or something that "may look cool if we develop it".
 
MaxPastukhov said:
You are absolutely right :)

If you are curious, you can take a look at my profile to find that I faced the same exact problem. My solution was to give up on trading and focus on product development. It may be not the best choice for a person addicted to trading but I'm more addicted to coding. Maybe I missed great opportunities, who knows?

It's not about facing customer issues, it's about my personal preferences. I would prefer to develop something rather than watching charts and taking risks. I was sure that I can do both when I came here but I was wrong. You may call it "the lack of research" but I had no clue about it until I actually tried. My initial plan seemed like a heaven for a software developer: "Trade proftitably, organize and automate my own work, develop and sell products I personally use to make money, make my customers happy and make even more money out of it".

It didn't work out as I initially expected, but I'm not disappointed. I'm happy to focus on product development and I see that people like what I do more than if I shared my trading success/failures :) I feel that I'm doing the right job.

This decision also enabled me to focus on what my customers' needs, not on what I think is right or wrong. I no longer try to enforce my own view of the market, my personal trading ideas or methods. I'm just following other people ideas, giving them what they requested. It's not "me" who develops the product, it's my customers. I'm just a servant and I'm OK with it. "Being creative" doesn't mean "being creative from the beginning to the end". I can still be creative in details, in implementation, in algorithms and interfaces.

I came into the software business in my early 20th for freedom, to become my own boss. I was an active member of a software vendors' chat in the past, where we invented a self-explanatory abbreviation: "BYOIB" - "Being Your Own Inadequate Boss". I'm not sure that I'm able to translate its meaning correctly, but just imagine a shareware developer getting rid of the corporate world to create the same in his own company for himself. The same meaningless tasks, the same unrealistic deadlines, the same "corporate culture" and all other BS.

While I'm developing what other people requested, I know that they actually need it. It's not what a project manager just invented during a short brainstorm, or something that "may look cool if we develop it".
More...
Many years ago I was mentored into Amibroker by a trader who became my friend.
This guy 'Kave' initially wrote my coding then began teaching me coding.
Kave actually ran an online business of coding for people, he had his own website and due to his excellent reputation as a guru coder (which he was/is) had more business than he could handle.
Kave was a bit sick and decided to stop coding for others and was closing down his business.
I contemplated taking it up however didn't for this main reason.
People would ask him to code trading ideas they had which Kave & I just knew would never be profitable.
For me, dealing with the public whose trading knowledge is clueless for many reasons and writing code you know wont work for them would send me loopy.
Imagine this scenario: Mr. Traderstoopid asks you to code some fancy MACD with STO & RSI blah blah.
You write as per their spec, Mr Traderstoopid loses money then wants tweaking done month on month out while they search for this holy grail. Then he gets snarky because of his building frustration, let alone your own frustration writing shitty code.
Now I'm not implying this would be your situation, but interacting with the public can drive a good man to drink especially regarding trading systems.
 
themickey said:
Many years ago I was mentored into Amibroker by a trader who became my friend.
This guy 'Kave' initially wrote my coding then began teaching me coding.
Kave actually ran an online business of coding for people, he had his own website and due to his excellent reputation as a guru coder (which he was/is) had more business than he could handle.
Kave was a bit sick and decided to stop coding for others and was closing down his business.
I contemplated taking it up however didn't for this main reason.
People would ask him to code trading ideas they had which Kave & I just knew would never be profitable.
For me, dealing with the public whose trading knowledge is clueless for many reasons and writing code you know wont work for them would send me loopy.
Imagine this scenario: Mr. Traderstoopid asks you to code some fancy MACD with STO & RSI blah blah.
You write as per their spec, Mr Traderstoopid loses money then wants tweaking done month on month out while they search for this holy grail. Then he gets snarky because of his building frustration, let alone your own frustration writing shitty code.
Now I'm not implying this would be your situation, but interacting with the public can drive a good man to drink.
More...

You are absolutely right for the second time in a row, bro :)

If you are curios, you can look at my blog/older posts to find that I've recently made the final decision to focus on manual backtesting, learning and training for discretionary traders. I don't believe in the future of quantitative trading and I don't want to develop and sell something I will not be confident about. That's why I decided to go this way.

I found a lot of profitable discretionary traders who are 20-30 years in the business but I failed to find consistently profitable quants. I'm talking about retail traders here. Nothing beats screen time.
 
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