Why you should not learn to code

[nooby_mcnoob]

You shouldn't need to ask on a trading board.
I was a full time trader for 8 years. Then i went back part time into IT for 2 years, now full time IT.
After about 5 years I hit a slow period in my trading wasn't losing money but wasn't making enough either, just slowly sucking money out of my account for living expenses.

After being a full time trader for 8 years. Nothing in the corporate IT world can demoralise me any more. Its all a cake walk in comparison. I see some guys in the office demoralised, with the same behaviour and attitude patterns that i used to have 10 years ago.

I can believe that. Do you think you'll ever go back to trading?

 

[southall]

I can believe that. Do you think you'll ever go back to trading?

I never stopped trading, my algos are still running. But full time trading, no i wont go back that voluntarily, not unless my contract is terminated and i cant find anything else. Which could happen when we get the next down turn.

 

[zdave83]

...... I have various alerts set up during the week which launch a specific Jupyter notebook, that evaluates against my homebuilt data/trading platform, to inform a discretionary trade. Every time I have an idea, I code it up in Jupyter, set an alarm to check every X days whether to enter or not. It's pretty fun. Jupyter is nice and lightweight.

Try it out.

Appreciate the suggestion ... will take a look.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

I never stopped trading, my algos are still running. But full time trading, no i wont go back that voluntarily, not unless my contract is terminated and i cant find anything else. Which could happen when we get the next down turn.

You'll be fine in a downturn if you're contracting. Generally, contractors are the first to go from a busines that needs to reorganize, but also contractors are preferred to full-time hires at the same time when the work needs to be done.

 

[fan27]

You shouldn't need to ask on a trading board.
I was a full time trader for 8 years. Then i went back part time into IT for 2 years, now full time IT.
After about 5 years I hit a slow period in my trading wasn't losing money but wasn't making enough either, just slowly sucking money out of my account for living expenses.

After being a full time trader for 8 years. Nothing in the corporate IT world can demoralise me any more. Its all a cake walk in comparison. I see some guys in the office demoralised, with the same behaviour and attitude patterns that i used to have 10 years ago.

There is something to be said for a fat steady paycheck.

 

[SteveH]

Dude in the video thinks he's a know-it-all. He had too much money with too little common sense. He lacks a vital ingredient in his personality to trade well...humility. It's not about being smart. It's about having good powers of observation, relentlessness in what you're doing and admitting quickly when you're most likely wrong.

Coding is fun. It's personally rewarding. I encourage everyone to learn how to program to help them in their trading endeavors.

I've had more enjoyment and more rewards by hand backtesting the charts I trade. It inspires creativity. You'll see things no computer program is going to pick up on. Mark Douglas put it best, paraphrased, "Creativity occurs when you're able to suspend your current belief systems".

Super smart, arrogant tech leads. That's what you should stay away from.

 

[nooby_mcnoob]

Dude in the video thinks he's a know-it-all

He's being VERY sarcastic. I think it's a joke. Or at least I hope it is.

 

[d08]

AI singularity is decades away, until then everyone should learn how to code.

I don't code but would be glad to learn at least half way decent in languages of stock market and trading at least.

Pretty sure that is also sarcastic. Although he goes from sarcasm to seriousness in a second, hard to say when.

 

[d08]

For those who code to support trading and have been around for awhile ... has there been an ET thread with member descriptions of what/why they're coding, and the apps/languages/environments/data they're coding with ? Just curious.

I don't think there has been a specific thread about it. I learned more serious coding only for trading/algo purposes (HTML in the 90s doesn't count). Never worked as a programmer, although it helped automate certain things at work which gave me loads of free time.
Using Python/Pandas and a crapload of other modules with IB, fairly standard toolset nowadays. I've been getting more serious about data structures lately and trying to think as an architect rather than a script kiddie but I don't necessarily know if it's a wise decision as the time required is immense.

 

[d08]

The difference between profitable or not most of the time day trading wise is simply.

Counter Trend = Loser.
Trend = Winner.

It's so easy to countertrend, it has a big move, you try to reverse it, you get SL'd think but that's the top, reverse it, get SL'd and so on and so worth.

Where is it's hard to take it's going up, but pulled back, so lets join it and ride it, but it looks so scarey as occasionally it reverse spikes, you just can't join it.

Even after 12 years, I keep slipping into above, half arsing my trades, generally to lazy to trade proper.

And I'm nearly a genius so what chance does the average 100 IQ person have!!

Nonsense. I've made the vast majority of my returns on mean reversion (counter trend). Unless you have some other definition of counter-trend...