jamrock 

if you now have these so called amazing k evn indicators which this is beginnign to sound more and more like a plug for this book anyway if yuo ahve these new tweaked indicators why not manually trade them immediately and see if they help you and if so why even automate.

Thanks, jamrock, for your posts, and I am contemplating everything you have said.

I MUST clear up something, however. The book I mentioned has nothing to do with indicators. It is strictly about the process of creating and backtesting strategies. He does not sell, as far as I know, any indicators.

The indicators I mentioned, and I do believe have the potential to create an edge if configured properly, are by another vendor. Although I did mention the vendor, I have not mentioned which indicators, so hopefully no one will think I am trying to plug them, too.

As for trading these indicators manually, there have been times when I might have done that, but now I am trying to backtest the strategies I use before I commit real money to them, and I can't backtest manual trading.

As for my honesty, I am honest enough to consider everything you have said, even though your posts are obviously not supportive of my efforts. I thank you for your constructive advice, and I wish you continued success in your trading.

Rick

jamrock 

saying it was a plug for the book was obviously not meant to be literal! lol

To be clear, there is no issue under the very strict futures.io rules about vendor self-promotion in any of these posts. If there had been, they would have been deleted. @kevinkdog is scrupulous about adhering to the vendor rules, and actually bends over backward to not even allow the appearance of breaking them, and he did that here.

Bob.

Of course it will take more than 1 year to program a badass algo. Duh. You're not even close yet. You won't be out of the woods for a long time...
Don't show my post to your WIFE.

Eh, a wife? I thought those were made to be obsolete after they invented the dishwasher and wash machine. Just playing with you OP, don't be offended by my line. Haha.

Wives don't approve of many things, such as: video games, youtube bikini models, not cooking her dinner, not making enough money at job, not making money trading, and being obsessed with hobbies. Tinkering around and NOT making money is not acceptable to them, I totally get it from their point of view. If you are a bachelor like myself, then you get to do anything you want!!!!! I have a kid who I love dearly and I provide a good life for. You should take this serious, because some men get divorced for losing MONEY and then they don't get to see their kids! When I lose SOME money, I still get to see my kid, all the time! You might not be so lucky as me.

I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer here. I say, do whatever the hell you want. Just know that a woman could legally divorce you for any reason under the sun. You make a million dollars trading? Well you're NEVER around for her, and now she's losing the "lovey dovey" feelings. Even being successful can be enough reason for her to leave you.

Algo trading isn't any easier, it's HARDER.
How would you deal with the Trump Tweet today at 2:38 eastern time? I escaped before it tanked by just knowing my bigger timeframe on H1 with resistance being up there near the sell off and cumulative delta being negative all day long sellers absorbing everything (super suspicious with rising prices). My hair on my neck was standing up before the drop. BEFORE THE DROP! I did NOT see his Tweet, I was out in the yard enjoying fresh air, fully flattened out with no position.

Don't gamble your retirement away or your kid's college money. Set a limit. IF you lose, take a break from it.


I believe you're posting for validation. You've made up your mind, you just want validation.
And here's the cold hard reality: Algo trading is hardcore shit. You need to co-locate your server AT the CME exchange building. There are servers you can rent, I think. You should probably have a membership with the CME if you're trying to do HFT, that way you can save big on exchange fees and if your volume is high enough, you might be lucky enough to get a $0.15 rebate paid to you per order plus zero exchange fees (goodluck getting to that point...). You can backtest your system and it can still fail. You can manage money perfectly and fail. Edges come and go, all the time. I promise you, you don't know enough still. So keep researching and TINKERING...No, don't RISK REAL MONEY! Just friggin' tinker for a while. Right now, you can't compete at their level.


I never got married and thus I didn't have any pressure from a woman regarding "should I trade or not" and their OPINION. There was plenty of pressure without marriage involved with trading and money in my life. Pressure cooker for sure! How do guys manage both marriage and trading? It's not for me, but different strokes for different folks right!

If money is no problem for you, just give it a go. If you are trading your mortgage/rent money, STOP.
If you inherited $100k, don't deposit all of it and "experiment". You can experiment on a demo.
If you are on a shoe-string bootstrapped budget, um no, don't trade, NO! because you'll constantly be pressured to trade. The best trades will come at the least expected times and it's not consistant like a 9-5 job.

I pulled $7k out of market last month. It's taken a long time to get to this point. I still struggle at times. My best losing days are when I lose 1 trade and walk away from it. It's not glorious. I love it and I hate it.

133usd 

I believe you're posting for validation. You've made up your mind, you just want validation. And here's the cold hard reality: Algo trading is hardcore shit. You need to co-locate your server AT the CME exchange building. There are servers you can rent, I think. You should probably have a membership with the CME if you're trying to do HFT, that way you can save big on exchange fees and if your volume is high enough, you might be lucky enough to get a $0.15 rebate paid to you per order plus zero exchange fees (goodluck getting to that point...). You can backtest your system and it can still fail. You can manage money perfectly and fail. Edges come and go, all the time. I promise you, you don't know enough still. So keep researching and TINKERING...No, don't RISK REAL MONEY! Just friggin' tinker for a while. Right now, you can't compete at their level.

Thanks for the post. You are not the first person to think I am seeking validation. I am only in the sense that I frankly got tired and irritated in continuously justifying my activity to my wife, that I finally told her that I would post to this forum and let the replies confirm whether or not the time it is taking to develop profitable strategies is appropriate. As I stated in my OP, I was pretty sure of the replies I would get.

It seems that most of those who have replied negatively are discretionary traders who simply don't believe in algo trading.

Thanks-
Rick

Bionan 

Thanks for the post. You are not the first person to think I am seeking validation. I am only in the sense that I frankly got tired and irritated in continuously justifying my activity to my wife, that I finally told her that I would post to this forum and let the replies confirm whether or not the time it is taking to develop profitable strategies is appropriate. As I stated in my OP, I was pretty sure of the replies I would get. It seems that most of those who have replied negatively are discretionary traders who simply don't believe in algo trading. Thanks- Rick

If you are good at programming I think you have a shot. If you aren't a programmer, it might take a while.

I "believe" in Algo trading, for sure. It's how we even have HFT's in the market at all. Some algos are turned off and on too. Some are only for execution of large orders (execution algos), to slice them up. Some are predatory algos that seek to hunt liquidity. There's an algo that will buy into the close of the day. There's algos that will simply execute if and when the liquidity is sitting there on the book only. There are market making algos on TT platform to keep a constant bid/ask X-amount of points from inside bid/ask. Algo is vague, as there's so many kinds.

Some algos have a human input to decide when to turn it on. So there's a ton of variables. There's even an algo that trades off of Trump's tweets! There is machine readable news that is used to gauge sentiment mechanically. It's extremely fascinating to me, as a non-programmer. It's so interesting that my 1 wish would be to have the time to properly learn to program at some point, and dig into the field and "tinker" as I call it, but tinker on demo first. And only when I have something decent would I invest in server space and co-locate, etc. For me, it would take several years I'm sure, because I'm not a math major or a programmer. I've dug into research papers on market making and even CFTC research on market spikes in different markets/volatility and effect of the LOB/% of limit orders cancelled and how it effects price and hidden liquidity % in each market from indexes to softs, etc. Almost all of these research papers I found, have advanced math that I can't understand at all so I hit a road block pretty quickly.

Still, I don't think I could build something which can double my sub-account in less than 1 day of trading. It's my high risk small account that I get ultra aggressive with. It's the best I've ever done, return wise.

Yes it would be frustrating justifying it to Wife.
Wife is the business partner, life partner, co-owner of everything. You gotta be Mr Salesman to her. Sell it.
If I was married during my rough period, I would have been killed in my sleep, 100% sure of it.

A huge shortcut would be to get your hands on some really GOOD code.....

133usd 

Of course it will take more than 1 year to program a badass algo. Duh. You're not even close yet. You won't be out of the woods for a long time... Don't show my post to your WIFE. Eh, a wife? I thought those were made to be obsolete after they invented the dishwasher and wash machine. Just playing with you OP, don't be offended by my line. Haha. Wives don't approve of many things, such as: video games, youtube bikini models, not cooking her dinner, not making enough money at job, not making money trading, and being obsessed with hobbies. Tinkering around and NOT making money is not acceptable to them, I totally get it from their point of view. If you are a bachelor like myself, then you get to do anything you want!!!!! I have a kid who I love dearly and I provide a good life for. You should take this serious, because some men get divorced for losing MONEY and then they don't get to see their kids! When I lose SOME money, I still get to see my kid, all the time! You might not be so lucky as me. I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer here. I say, do whatever the hell you want. Just know that a woman could legally divorce you for any reason under the sun. You make a million dollars trading? Well you're NEVER around for her, and now she's losing the "lovey dovey" feelings. Even being successful can be enough reason for her to leave you. Algo trading isn't any easier, it's HARDER. How would you deal with the Trump Tweet today at 2:38 eastern time? I escaped before it tanked by just knowing my bigger timeframe on H1 with resistance being up there near the sell off and cumulative delta being negative all day long sellers absorbing everything (super suspicious with rising prices). My hair on my neck was standing up before the drop. BEFORE THE DROP! I did NOT see his Tweet, I was out in the yard enjoying fresh air, fully flattened out with no position. Don't gamble your retirement away or your kid's college money. Set a limit. IF you lose, take a break from it. I believe you're posting for validation. You've made up your mind, you just want validation. And here's the cold hard reality: Algo trading is hardcore shit. You need to co-locate your server AT the CME exchange building. There are servers you can rent, I think. You should probably have a membership with the CME if you're trying to do HFT, that way you can save big on exchange fees and if your volume is high enough, you might be lucky enough to get a $0.15 rebate paid to you per order plus zero exchange fees (goodluck getting to that point...). You can backtest your system and it can still fail. You can manage money perfectly and fail. Edges come and go, all the time. I promise you, you don't know enough still. So keep researching and TINKERING...No, don't RISK REAL MONEY! Just friggin' tinker for a while. Right now, you can't compete at their level. I never got married and thus I didn't have any pressure from a woman regarding "should I trade or not" and their OPINION. There was plenty of pressure without marriage involved with trading and money in my life. Pressure cooker for sure! How do guys manage both marriage and trading? It's not for me, but different strokes for different folks right! If money is no problem for you, just give it a go. If you are trading your mortgage/rent money, STOP. If you inherited $100k, don't deposit all of it and "experiment". You can experiment on a demo. If you are on a shoe-string bootstrapped budget, um no, don't trade, NO! because you'll constantly be pressured to trade. The best trades will come at the least expected times and it's not consistant like a 9-5 job. I pulled $7k out of market last month. It's taken a long time to get to this point. I still struggle at times. My best losing days are when I lose 1 trade and walk away from it. It's not glorious. I love it and I hate it.

Not to divert attention from the thread topic but I had to say, there is definitely growing trend with men who are now avoiding marriage all together because of the reasons you mentioned.

Its worth is questionable given amount of mental circus you have to do to just live your life a little.

Your post was great to read, thanks! I also support Binon in his journey, its time consuming, but its worth doing it, so keep up, its good as long as you are honest to yourself.
/In before all the wives attack me

Discretionary trader here.

I'll state a few reasons why I believe automation will never work for a retail trader:

1. Direct competion (hence, no win) with institutional quants.
2. Exorbitant costs in terms of comission.
3. Bots trading off the news (instant change of market behaviour while your algo is relying on lagging indicators).

And, to add, I don't know a sigle successful sytem trader on the retail side, while there's a lot of proven disctretionary traders that I know of.

Not meant do discourage, just a few subjective points to consider.

Thanks.

speck 

Discretionary trader here. I'll state a few reasons why I believe automation will never work for a retail trader: 1. Direct competion (hence, no win) with institutional quants. 2. Exorbitant costs in terms of comission. 3. Bots trading off the news (instant change of market behaviour while your algo is relying on lagging indicators). And, to add, I don't know a sigle successful sytem trader on the retail side, while there's a lot of proven disctretionary traders that I know of. Not meant do discourage, just a few subjective points to consider. Thanks.

That's an interesting take, but here I think OP is asking about general trading strategy automation and not HFT stuff.
Difference being, this is just automating whatever you would do manually otherwise.

HFT quant trading is different ball game all together.

LastDino 

That's an interesting take, but here I think OP is asking about general trading strategy automation and not HFT stuff. Difference being, this is just automating whatever you would do manually otherwise. HFT quant trading is different ball game all together.

I believe quants program everything nowadays, from HFT and scalping to intraday rotations and day holding trades.
Massive supercomputers are constantly churning out data in persuit of the available edge.
Good luck trying to beat them in their own game.

speck 

I believe quants program everything nowadays, from HFT and scalping to intraday rotations and day holding trades. Massive supercomputers are constantly churning out data in persuit of the available edge. Good luck trying to beat them in their own game.

But then wouldn't that mean discretionary trading is also useless act?