I think it's possible if you get someone from a country where the Googles and Facebooks don't have offices. Plenty of countries have talented developers where it's still rare to earn $100k a year if you're senior. Silicon Valley companies do hire globally but they only hire the best of the best, there's still excellent people left who earn much less.
Thinking of hiring a programmer... Help very welcomed
- Thread starter xicaob
- Start date
I think it's possible if you get someone from a country where the Googles and Facebooks don't have offices. Plenty of countries have talented developers where it's still rare to earn $100k a year if you're senior. Silicon Valley companies do hire globally but they only hire the best of the best, there's still excellent people left who earn much less.
I will just a say a couple things. (Not a professional programmer.)
I managed to piece together a software solution for one of my problems. It takes the IB API data streams (performs a bunch of quant math on them) and creates a chart in Excel, in real-time.
With these charts (which are simple and use values taken every second) I can keep an eye on the index futures market maker so that I know what's going on before size players move the market.
This way I make money instead of losing it, net net.
Learned a few things in the process.
IB's API is powerful, but it's also highly non trivial to build robust, accurate, timely, and performant programs with.
Even professional programmers have serious frustrations with it. I'm not saying you shouldn't use this broker/software/api, but I will say one thing.
What you want is way too ambitious.***
If you hope to have ANY chance of pulling this off, you're gonna need the Tiger Woods of brokerage software programming interface excellence.
(this implies the guy is already printing money with his elite software engineering skillz)
I managed to piece together a software solution for one of my problems. It takes the IB API data streams (performs a bunch of quant math on them) and creates a chart in Excel, in real-time.
With these charts (which are simple and use values taken every second) I can keep an eye on the index futures market maker so that I know what's going on before size players move the market.
This way I make money instead of losing it, net net.
Learned a few things in the process.
IB's API is powerful, but it's also highly non trivial to build robust, accurate, timely, and performant programs with.
Even professional programmers have serious frustrations with it. I'm not saying you shouldn't use this broker/software/api, but I will say one thing.
What you want is way too ambitious.***
If you hope to have ANY chance of pulling this off, you're gonna need the Tiger Woods of brokerage software programming interface excellence.
(this implies the guy is already printing money with his elite software engineering skillz)
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I don't know, in my experience the arb opportunity days are long gone on that. You might get someone good at a 25% discount (and the commiserate language, time zone, and remote work difficulties), but definitely not a 75% discount. You may well be able to find someone good at sub-$100K but you're not going to find them on Upwork and probably not without some inside info and on the ground contacts in the country you're hiring from.
Most of the requirements can be done. I will say that IB API itself has a limitation - which if you cant do something within IB API, you have to do that functionality outside IB in parallel. Syncrhonization becomes a little tricky and has to be done either using some publish-subscribe/queuing messaging technology (asynchronous) or a database centralized coordination(synchronous).
I run a small hedge fund and have was a Software engineer in my early career. I have build lot of custom built systems. Most are quick hacks to get the job done as requirements are ever changing. We have systems that live update google spreadsheets which can be shared with your team. We have custom algo alerts/notification based on IB real time data and computation that go to our iphones. We have publish-subscribe communication technology to keep many different apps/databases/systems in sync.
Each requirement has a cost/benefit function - 95% of the time, quick hacks get the job done. these reqirements mostly related to presenting the data or notification in certain way so that a human can make the final decision on the trade.
We have 5% of the systems that are completely automated. This is where it gets really really really nasty. Your code must plan for all market situations and conditions and even false data or weird data being fed to you by IB. There are so many different conditions and situations that need to be accounted for and TESTED. We also have dollar limits in our trade so as not to have a runaway trade that keeps doing the wrong trade and loosing a lot of money fast. There is more. This is where it gets really costly - becayse these systems are not quick hacks - they have to be bullet proof and there is only one way to achieve that - through sheer hard work of a lot of coding and testing. If you drop this requirement, you cost will immediately drop by 80%.
Having said that and look at the rest of your requirements, any competent programmer is not going to charge you less that about $15K. Mostly like its going to be about 3 months of work and about $30K.
If you are on your own, I would recommend learning the IB API, and GoogleSheets API and getting the data from IB to googlesheets in a manner that allows you to make an informed decision about your trade in real time.
If you are a fund, hire contract coder with a lot of experience. They wont be cheap. Make sure they have coded a lots of stuff using IB API.
I run a small hedge fund and have was a Software engineer in my early career. I have build lot of custom built systems. Most are quick hacks to get the job done as requirements are ever changing. We have systems that live update google spreadsheets which can be shared with your team. We have custom algo alerts/notification based on IB real time data and computation that go to our iphones. We have publish-subscribe communication technology to keep many different apps/databases/systems in sync.
Each requirement has a cost/benefit function - 95% of the time, quick hacks get the job done. these reqirements mostly related to presenting the data or notification in certain way so that a human can make the final decision on the trade.
We have 5% of the systems that are completely automated. This is where it gets really really really nasty. Your code must plan for all market situations and conditions and even false data or weird data being fed to you by IB. There are so many different conditions and situations that need to be accounted for and TESTED. We also have dollar limits in our trade so as not to have a runaway trade that keeps doing the wrong trade and loosing a lot of money fast. There is more. This is where it gets really costly - becayse these systems are not quick hacks - they have to be bullet proof and there is only one way to achieve that - through sheer hard work of a lot of coding and testing. If you drop this requirement, you cost will immediately drop by 80%.
Having said that and look at the rest of your requirements, any competent programmer is not going to charge you less that about $15K. Mostly like its going to be about 3 months of work and about $30K.
If you are on your own, I would recommend learning the IB API, and GoogleSheets API and getting the data from IB to googlesheets in a manner that allows you to make an informed decision about your trade in real time.
If you are a fund, hire contract coder with a lot of experience. They wont be cheap. Make sure they have coded a lots of stuff using IB API.
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Thanks for all your comments, my friends.
Im thinking about go an alternative route, a plan B, for this, and is to only automate the essential stuff. Will be posting the sketch asap.
Question: I use Investing.com app for alerts and its a pain for me to review and check one by one of the +100 alerts the every saturday. Can the programmer link my IB account (Stop loss orders info of my entire portfolio) to those apps like Investing or trading view? The second one has a plan that allows the user to set up to 200 alerts. It would be awesome that If I move o create a Stop Loss order, it would me synch to this app so its frees me a lot of precious time.
Please, take care!
Im thinking about go an alternative route, a plan B, for this, and is to only automate the essential stuff. Will be posting the sketch asap.
Question: I use Investing.com app for alerts and its a pain for me to review and check one by one of the +100 alerts the every saturday. Can the programmer link my IB account (Stop loss orders info of my entire portfolio) to those apps like Investing or trading view? The second one has a plan that allows the user to set up to 200 alerts. It would be awesome that If I move o create a Stop Loss order, it would me synch to this app so its frees me a lot of precious time.
Please, take care!
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Starting my plan B, I wonder if its possible, when I place a Stop Loss order or move its price up or down on an existing one if automatically a price alert can be created (or modified in case that one was already created when I first created the stop loss order).
I need to have an alert/alarm system (preferably on my cellphone, IBKR Mobile, that always carry with me, in case the price drop, ensuring that the Stop Loss have been triggered (completely).
I open to alternatives ways to achieve that, but having an integrated solution inside TWS (and mobile too, of course), would be great.
Much blessings and take care, friends.
I need to have an alert/alarm system (preferably on my cellphone, IBKR Mobile, that always carry with me, in case the price drop, ensuring that the Stop Loss have been triggered (completely).
I open to alternatives ways to achieve that, but having an integrated solution inside TWS (and mobile too, of course), would be great.
Much blessings and take care, friends.