Why I quit algorithmic trading

Quote from tradingjournals:

Real conclusion(in less words): One should not expect a poet to excel in mathematical areas, in fact one should expect the poet to fail in applied math and therefore no surprises there.
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If you're implying that trading is a "mathematical area," then you're dead wrong out of the gate, kid.

In fact, it's a lot closer to poetry. And furthermore, the entire premise is barely naive, but that's beside the point.

Points 1 and 2 of the original post are unchanging truths.

The rest sounds like an advertisement.
 
Quote from Maverick74:

What didn't I figure out? I posted the article you tool.
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Tool???

Cut the crap and man-up, weasel.

By posting it verbatim without a closing comment you've endorsed what he wrote.
 
Quote from jprad:

Tool???

Cut the crap and man-up, weasel.

By posting it verbatim without a closing comment you've endorsed what he wrote.
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Huh? Closing comment? Hahahaha. Dude, I posted an article. Read it or don't read it. I don't care. Welcome to the internet huckleberry.
 
Whoever wrote it is a failure and a loser. Never get advice about trading from losers. Get advice only from winners. It's that simple. Applies to everything. Think about it: if you planned to open a restaurant would you take advice from a loser or from a winner with a very profitable operation?
 
Quote from shotse:

Never give up. That's the best advice anyone can give you and I wish someone told me that when I was younger. So here you go, I'm telling you right now to never give up because there wasn't someone there to tell me to never give up. You can do it.
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hear, hear. We need more of this. There's too much failure and rooting for failure on this board. Many people probably want others to fail, but don't be dissuaded.

Most interesting thing is that he worked with profitable traders and was not able to translate their system into an algo. Algo trading isn't my area, but he either can't code well or he needed to focus on strategies that work well with an algo system, instead of a discretionary system that is based on someone's mind and experience.
 
2. Every time I teamed up with a trader in an automated trading venture, their trading strategies and ideas ended up not working despite the fact that they had been previously successful (often remarkably successful) as either floor or screen traders. This usually meant that I had spent a year or more of my time coding up a state-of-the-art trading platform that amounted to nothing.
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This is the key point imo - to me this says he spent his time coding other people's strategies and never spent time developing his own. The fact that he worked in trading is irrelevant, this appears to say he just spent his time coding (could've been any other industry).

Maybe I'm wrong, but this doesn't send a very encouraging message about his experience. M2c.
 
Quote from intradaybill:

Whoever wrote it is a failure and a loser. Never get advice about trading from losers.
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Virtually 100% of my profits come from capturing the spread...
It's the core earnings engine for every successful trading firm.

You can do momentum or reversion or quant whatever...
That stuff works well in high volatility periods...
But it's the spread that keeps you in business year after year.

Also, there is no such thing as a "trading firm" anymore...
What used to be a "trading firm" 10 years ago...
Is now a software firm that develops and deploys trading software.

Wait... this is top secret information, nevermind.
 
Quote from the1:

Never give up and find a way to adapt to changing market conditions. The reason traders lose their edge is because the market conditions change and the trader sticks with the same strategy that will no longer work. The transition from 2008 to 2009 is a perfect example. We went from a high volatility, high intra-day range to a low volatility, low intra-day range. Scaling in and out in a volatile market is a viable strategy. Not so in a non-volatile market. Get caught scaling on the wrong side of a trend and you're up the creek.
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I'm not sure why people keep saying that market conditions change. They do, but not fundamentally, and that in turn proves that traders have merely come up with a strategy that only works within the current zeitgeist. A sphere of quasi-consistency. I have been applying the same tactics for over a decade and it still works the same like on the first day.
 
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