>This bot watches Donald Trump's tweets and waits for him to mention any publicly traded companies.
Ok, simple enough, go on.
> When he does, it uses sentiment analysis to determine whether his opinions are positive or negative toward those companies.
Eh, sentiment analysis isn't perfect but it has come a long way, plus Trump does typically say what he means in simplistic language.
> The bot then automatically executes trades on the relevant stocks according to the expected market reaction.
Ah market psychology. Stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. This is the tricky bit that a toy project will never get right and turns your slick algorithmic trading project into a monkey and a dart board.
It's perfectly workable. The bot just needs to weigh its trades properly and provided the sentiment signal has any alpha, it can be combined with other analysis to run a profitable strategy.
I've seen this working and working very well (day job), although not specifically with Trump tweets.
If it works, the last thing you want to do is post it on HN, because it'll stop working once everyone starts using it. Everybody else running the bot will bid up the prices of affected stocks before you can get to it, and so by the time your bot gets around to executing its trade, you'll be buying at inflated prices and lose money as everyone else takes their profits.
Not necessarily. If you can get a bunch of unsophisticated traders on relatively high-latency connections (AKA the readers here) to execute a known strategy, you can actually make a lot of money by simply frontrunning them. :)
Especially because the effect of Trump's tweets has rapidly shifted. His Boeing tweet hurt their stock price considerably. But just a few weeks later, his Nordstrom tweet helped quite a bit.
I guess you could weigh it against his favorability polling, but you're right, this is all just guesswork masquerading as science.
Those are two very different companies, though. It's not like the average consumer can make any sort of buying decision that will affect an aerospace company, but they can certainly patronize or boycott a department store. Plus Boeing likely does a lot of business with the federal government which Trump is now head of, while retail outlets are highly unlikely to be directly affected by anything a President does.
Can confirm. I've been running this bot for 8 minutes and currently have a $7.8 million short position against the fake NYT. SEE YOU IN COURT, @maxbbraun!
So, we should just invert the bots request. If Trump reacts negatively, the bot interprets that as a buy. And a positive Trump reaction should be a sell.
Now your holding lots of Nordstrom and NYT, and riding the wave up. Congrats, your going to be a millionaire!
From the admittedly small data set of 6 tweets, it looks like the answer is "no" with one exception where the market took over an hour to react. I'm curious why the Ford lag time was so different.
Because Ford's actions had been expected/known for some time. Trump literally had nothing to do with it. You don't just spin up factories like an EC2 instance.
His other tweets regarding other companies were all future-tense, and companies he is in a position to bully. Except for Nordstrom, of course.
I'd be interested in learning why TradeKing was used , as I haven't used it myself - was it for an especially solid API, or just because TradeKing is easy to get set up and doesn't require a minimum investment? If anyone wants to play around with this and has at least $10k to play with, Interactive Brokers will give you better fees.
Also, I feel like there should be a disclaimer that given how accessible this strategy is (both in required skill and resources) and how much attention the Trump tweets phenomenon has gotten, any alpha from this has been almost certainly lost to other firms. This is a cool project, but it's probably not actually an effective strategy anymore.
"The efficient markets hypothesis may be "the best established fact in all of social sciences," but the best established fact in all of financial markets is that, when there is news about a big famous private company going public or being acquired, the shares of a tiny obscure public company with a similar name will shoot up. I don't know what that tells you about the efficient markets hypothesis, but it happened to Nestor, Inc., and to Tweeter Home Entertainment, and to Oculus VisionTech Inc., and now it has happened to SNAP Interactive Inc.:
In what is almost surely a case of mistaken identity, investors sent shares in a little known startup called SNAP Interactive Inc., ticker STVI, surging 164 percent in the four days since Snap Inc. filed for a $3 billion initial public offering. The $69 million SNAP Interactive makes mobile dating apps, while the IPO aspirant is the parent of the popular Snapchat photo-sharing app.
These stories are always less impressive when expressed in dollar terms than they are in percentages. In the four trading days since Snap Inc. filed its S-1, SNAP Interactive has traded 19,963 shares, worth less than $200,000, according to Bloomberg data. If you had a cunning plan to buy up SNAP shares and sell them for a quick profit when Snap filed to go public, it might have worked, but not in particularly huge size."
There was an article a while back -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1144548 -- purporting that the efficient market hypothesis is true if and only if P = NP. ... which I'd argue implies social science is overly optimistic about that hypothesis.
That also implies that if the market is very close to efficient, you need absolutely massive amounts of computational power to bring it even closer (i.e. to make money). So even if it is inefficient, that doesn't mean anyone can reasonably expect to find exploitable patterns.
Comparing the last version of STVI's Investor Relations page on archive.org [1] (May 2016 pre Snapchat company name change) to the version today [2], I'm not convinced they aren't trying to be intentionally deceptive. It almost looks like they rewrote their description to sound vaguely like Snapchat.
May 2016:
> Snap Interactive, Inc. (“SNAP”) develops, owns and operates dating applications for social networking websites and mobile platforms. SNAP’s flagship brand, FirstMet.com, is a multi-platform online dating site with a large user database of approximately 30 million users. FirstMet.com‘s mission is to improve the online dating experience of meeting new people by integrating a user’s friends and interests to enable more meaningful connections. SNAP’s newest application, The Grade, is a patent-pending mobile dating application catering to high-quality singles.
Present (emphasis mine):
> Snap Interactive, Inc. (“SNAP”) (OTCQB: STVI) develops, owns and operates real-time, rich media social networking and dating applications on desktop and mobile computing platforms. Supported by a portfolio of 25 patents, SNAP is a leader in real-time video communication, with groundbreaking products powering one of the world’s largest collections of video-based communities. Through brands such as Paltalk, FirstMet, Camfrog and Tinychat, SNAP has helped hundreds of millions of users around the world make meaningful friendships and romantic connections.
The example that is cited in my family is the Seaboard Air Line company, whose stock experienced a short surge in popularity in the late 1920s after Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. The only problem was that the company was a railroad, first founded in the early 1800s. The "air line" part of its name was a reference to direct route from point A to point B, 'as the crow flies'.
Pretty clever and effective message. I'd put money on this being shared by all my friends on Facebook in a few days.
Trump's last couple tweets have backfired and actually increased his targets' stock price though. You might have to flip the algorithm around if this continues.
Brilliant. I've been thinking about something like this for a while.
Why don't you take it to the next level? Provoke Trump on Twitter, associating yourself with a company. Then short that company's stock and wait until he lashes out against them. Profit!
Every time he Tweets something, he gets tens of thousands of responses in a matter of minutes, and when he's not tweeting anything, people are still tweeting at him constantly.
Tweets seem to have an impact of around 1-3% lasting hours to days. Many (most?) stocks have too high implied volatility to begin with for straddling by tweet to be a productive strategy.
If you could spot the tweet and know the direction it'd move there might be cheap enough options to make money on one side, but the "ensemble" aspect of a straddle means that you need to make twice as much to cover the premiums before you make any returns.
I believe it is only logical to assume that the OP meant this as a fun project and not to earn money from.
Anyone knowing a little of the stock market knows that different factors play the game and not a factor. e.g. maybe if Trump wouldn't have tweeted Intel would have gone down >2.6%
It doesn't need to be right every time, it needs to beat the market. I am not saying that I know that it does beat the market, but it would be interesting to know if it does.
All you have provided is proof that it is sometimes wrong, which is not surprising at all.
I think you have this backwards. If Trump tweets a negative sentiment, the bot buys from the company. If everyone did that, the price would go up - just the opposite of the current effect!
I know very little of the stock market, but shouldn't the bot buy shares when he tweets positive comments? Because that's when the stock is expected to rise and you can sell it later for a profit.
Indeed, but the comment you're responding to was tongue-in-cheek, specifically suggesting that Trump being positive of a stock is a negative indicator for it.
As the poster doesn't this gives Trump the power to manipulate markets with nothing more than a tweet?
You could argue he already has this power, but before the message needed to resonate with a large collective of people. Any public figure (like Warren Buffet, etc) can express an opinion that might effect the stock they are commenting on.
However as this group of people automate trades on only the contents of his tweets (and not say the contents of the tweet as well as past company performance, current POTUS approval ratings, dividend plans etc) he gains a scary amount of control over the markets.
To put another way. The only people who know what he will tweet earlier than these bots are Trump and maybe a select group of people he tells before hand.
Politicians impacting the stock market is nothing new. Pipeline and coal companies plummeted with Obama's executive orders, and the executive branch DOJ created a huge drop in prison stocks with what was effectively an indirect tweet. Solar stocks zig zagged according to the latest Solyndra and renewables subsidy activity. The only thing new is Twitter as a more easily machine-readable mouthpiece.
I think what's novel/different here is the examples you all cited are examples of market reaction to government action, compared to, let's call it "executive sentiment". The distinction here is people are anticipating future actions based a politician expressing feelings rather than taking action.
This could make quite a fun experiment to see if it works. Crowdsource an investment of something like $10,000 and let it run for a year. At the end, donate all proceeds to charity.
Wouldn't have been that uncommon to see someone testing this out with real money, see some early successes and start upping the ante, only to have the Nordstrom event lose them a substantial sum.
Unless you consider giving money to the counter party on your losing trades as well as the brokerage to which you pay commissions to be charitable contributions, you would be better off just giving the 10k straight to a good cause.
(I know this is just for fun, but...) I believe this won't work because of high-frequency trading. By the few seconds this latent python script will take to get the tweet, analyze the tweet, and execute a trade, high-speed bots will have already done something similar to a price level they decided was appropriate using sophisticated algorithms.
So basically, instead of this bot betting that Trump's tweets will change stock prices, you're actually betting on the HFT bots being wrong about how much Trump's tweets change stock prices.
From a brief search, most presidential candidates speak at around an 8th grade level. (Which makes sense. They need to appeal to a broad audience, and speaking at a higher level is usually counterproductive anyway unless you have a specialized audience.) Trump's speaking level is more like 3rd or 4th grade.
From a recent Fresh Air interview with Trevor Noah. Earlier on he explains with a more personal anecdote why simpler language matters. But is there such a thing as too simple? Is 8th grade language more effective than 4th grade language? Later on Trevor Noah says
You know, funny enough, one of the biggest moments of
realization was when Donald Trump won the election because
when I came into the show, I said, I think this guy can win.
This was when he first came down that escalator. He gave his
first speech.
And then I was like, wow, this guy's going to do well. And I
remember people laughed at me. People were like, oh, you
silly ignorant person who's just come to this world. You
clearly shouldn't be at "The Daily Show" 'cause you don't
know what you're talking about. And I was like, but I don't
know. He seems like he connects with people. I can relate to
him as a performer. I can see what tools he's using. He's
good at riffing. He's good at taking the crowd on a journey.
I can see what he's doing.
And people would say - and all throughout the race - and
there were times when, on the show, I would mention it. You
know, I mean, that's why I said Trump reminds me of an
African dictator. And that's where that came from because
everyone said to me, this guy is - he's just a fool. He's
just - he's a buffoon. I said, yeah, you can say that. But
I've seen this before. I have seen this before. I've seen
clowns that go on to take over their countries. I've seen
buffoons who end up ruling their worlds. And it came to
pass.
Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/12/16/505847054/trevor-noah-says-he-grew-up-in-the-shadow-of-a-giant-his-mom
Whenever Trump signs on executive order or signals an intention, I presume it will either fail or will end in bad results for the poor and middle class.
Then, working as if that were true, I see if there are any stocks or ETFs that would benefit from that and buy some.
You can even see on the chart how there was very little until inauguration, giant leaps after unpopular EO's, and you can even see the portfolio drop when Trump took a beat and eased up on the EOs after Feb 3rd.
This bot watches Donald Trump's tweets and waits for him to mention any publicly traded companies. When he does, it uses sentiment analysis to determine whether his opinions are positive or negative toward those companies. The bot then automatically executes trades on the relevant stocks according to the expected market reaction.
OK, so what's the expected market reaction? If Trump hates your company, does that make your stock go up, or down?
I think Nordstrom stock went up after a negative tweet because it was seen as good publicity for the company. Trump didn't actually "threaten" to retaliate or anything, whereas for companies like Ford or GM he actually said he would impose a heavy "border tax" if they opened factories elsewhere.
Maybe a bit difficult to do so because of the limited amount of data, but we could maybe only look at the tweets with positive sentiment, in which case the stock price will likely go up. As it is good publicity for the company and Trump was positive about the stock as well.
Won't work as well: the market now prices in the drop in GBP after she speaks, so as soon as there's even a hint she's going to say something substantive, the market drops like a stone, then recovers a bit if she doesn't say anything too awful.
HFT it - get a server near in network terms to the Twitter servers that handle Trumps tweets; use the millisecond advantage to buy ahead of the other bots, ...
You don't need to be hired by the company to be classed as an insider (though that obviously also counts). If you are privy to non-public information (which you would be if you were forewarned about a Trump PR stunt before it happened) and then you trade stock based on that information then legally you could be classed as an insider.
My buddy Sean from the white house texted me a few days ago that "Trump is going to make negative comments about Nordstrom soon", I shorted Nordstrom stock based on this information and made huge profits when Trump said the things Sean promised he would.
Do you think someone would be guilty of insider trading here? Nobody involved is connected to Nordstrom in any way.
i don't mean to sound dogmatic but the source I cited does explicitly say that the "insider" does not have to work inside the company specifically but rather just be privy to non-public information.
Unless you can find another citation that contradicts my point then I'm going to have to assume my point is correct. And I say that welcoming a correction in the name of "science" :)
>In the United States, Canada, Australia and Germany, for mandatory reporting purposes, corporate insiders are defined as a company's officers, directors and any beneficial owners of more than 10% of a class of the company's equity securities. Trades made by these types of insiders in the company's own stock, based on material non-public information, are considered fraudulent since the insiders are violating the fiduciary duty that they owe to the shareholders. The corporate insider, simply by accepting employment, has undertaken a legal obligation to the shareholders to put the shareholders' interests before their own, in matters related to the corporation. When insiders buy or sell based upon company-owned information, they are violating their obligation to the shareholders.
Presumably it's not this chapter you're referring to.
>For example, illegal insider trading would occur if the chief executive officer of Company A learned (prior to a public announcement) that Company A will be taken over and then bought shares in Company A while knowing that the share price would likely rise.
Probably not this one either
>In the United States and many other jurisdictions, however, "insiders" are not just limited to corporate officials and major shareholders where illegal insider trading is concerned but can include any individual who trades shares based on material non-public information in violation of some duty of trust. This duty may be imputed; for example, in many jurisdictions, in cases of where a corporate insider "tips" a friend about non-public information likely to have an effect on the company's share price, the duty the corporate insider owes the company is now imputed to the friend and the friend violates a duty to the company if he trades on the basis of this information.
Despite the fact that this chapter doesn't contain anything relevant either, it's probably this one you're referring to. There's no corporate insiders or relationships involving a duty of trust here.
It's not non-public information, it's non-public insider information, upon which you cannot legally trade.
"illegal insider trading requires that you not only trade on the basis of important nonpublic information but that you also have some sort of duty to keep the information confidential." - Kiplinger
If you overhear insiders talking, you can trade on it. (Unless you're in a position where they have reason to expect that you cannot, such as if you're an employee, etc.)
"Overall, the algorithm seems to succeed more often than not: The simulated fund has an annualized return of about 59% since inception. There are limits to the simulation and the underlying data, so take it all with a grain of salt."
Not sure, every Trump tweet that makes a positive or negative statement about a company adds one data point. So the number of samples is going to be rather small. However, whether the bot can be shown to perform significantly better than chance also depends on the size of the effect of a Trump tweet. If they produce huge bumps, a small number of tweets might be enough to show that this bot is working. Would be nice to be able to put a number on this.
the problem is hedge funds are already on his twitter like white on rice. Maybe there is hope in looking for breaking news from less-followed accounts.
I can't state how stupid this is. As if that person's bullshit's power of nuisance wasn't large enough, let's add automated echo chambers with a direct effect on the economy!
Don't be surprised if this crazy economic system can collapse any seconds with ideas like this.
Please not this again... This trope is like a full Bingo card of guideline violations but with an impressive lack of information. Please don't usher us into generic flamewar territory—we're here to have civil, thoughtful discussions.
The most prejudiced among us are always those quick to make the issue about themselves (poor me!) when someone tries to do something good for an underrepresented group. I assume you've never been to a "Girls who code" event (I have, and I'm a man), but if you had, I don't know how any reasonable person could think "this is a bad thing".
Precisely. Though I've never been to one personally (as a man), the women I know who have attended their events seem to benefit from it, as have the few men I know who have. The name may be "Girls Who Code", but the Boy Scouts & Girl Scouts aren't just boys and girls respectively.
Sexism[0] isn't the right word here, since it implies the belief that the victims are less able, which women are clearly not. I won't assume you hold that belief. Discrimination[1] is more neutral and is the better word to describe this situation.
I do occasional technical talks or workshops for free and some organisers have asked to make them 'girls only'. I've always declined and made it clear that everyone will be welcome. I don't see any malice in people who want to do gender-specific events, but I do not agree that excluding people is the way to go.
I say good luck to you if you are doing 'girls only' events. You are welcome to come to mine too, even though as a man I may not be welcome at yours.
I presume that you also refuse to do talks or workshops where all the speakers, panelists or mentors are of one gender or race? If so, good on you.
Look, you sound like a nice guy, so I don't mean this as a personal attack, but your take on this is a classic example of how good people can fall into the trap of their own privilege. You don't do events where men/boys are not allowed to attend (e.g. girls who code) and that sounds noble and ideal. However, it somewhat ignores the fact that the reason these events have come into existence is that our profession has for decades suffered from massive amounts of systemic discrimination (sexism in particular). Just because it's not encoded in a written set of rules, doesn't mean it hasn't always been present. For men/boys, there are infinitely more events to attend where the gender balance will always be swung widely in their favor.
When a woman developer joins/joined an all-male development team, do you think they have the luxury of being able to say "No, I won't do that"? Sure, there's no rule saying the team should be only male, but that's the "systemic" part. This is the "privilege" I'm referring to. You can say "no", because there are plenty of other talks and workshops for you to take part in. There is little to no negative impact on you from refusing those invites. What if women-only workshops were the predominant event out there?
I don't think events like Girls Who Code are the final solution. I agree with you that, in the end, an industry and events open to everyone is the solution. However, we've reached such a massive imbalance by operating via the status quo that I think things like Girls Who Code, despite being "discriminatory" by a textbook definition, have a net positive effect, rather than the opposite. I'll happily volunteer my time to teach more girls to again when I have the chance. I don't think the lip-service of saying our industry and events are open to both men and women will tip the scales towards equality.
> I presume that you also refuse to do talks or workshops where all the speakers, panelists or mentors are of one gender or race? If so, good on you.
No, I would not refuse, mostly because this does not match my experience (though I accept it happens) and also because I just don't check for this kind of thing beforehand. Further complicating matters is how people self-describe their race or gender. Some prefer to be genderless, some cultures use different definitions for race than Americans do (e.g. "white" in Latin America and "Hispanic" in USA has significant overlap or none at all, depending on your culture. Even more confusing, upper-class people with what we call "black" skin were sometimes referred to as "whites" when I lived in Brazil, and this still amuses me). Bottom line is I don't focus on this much and I'm happy to accept whatever people want to describe themselves as. I don't find it that interesting or important.
Back to the original topic, I think it would be perfectly fine to promote an event open to all, and to do so exclusively to women if that's who you want to target as promoter. Just don't tell any men to leave if they show up and I'm presenting, or I'm walking right out the door with them. I draw a distinction between promoting an event and access control at the event.
And no offense taken, your points are well made and I think we just have a difference of opinion.
Thank you for taking my response in the right way and responding thoughtfully. I do think we have a difference of opinion, but I respect the level of thought you've put into your stance. I've mentored at "Ladies learning code" events before and wasn't told to leave, they also have the occasional male participant, so I think this varies per organizer or organization.
Not OP, so please don't presume I'm speaking for him, but there's a HUGE difference between a "woman only" event (from which men would be excluded) and a "woman focused" event.
Similarly, there would be a difference between an all-male conference to which no women were invited and an all-male conference to which no women submitted.
To state the obvious, exclusion is the differentiator, and it is not counterintuitive to be simultaneously in favor of promoting women while also being against the exclusion of non-women.
My wife founded local chapters of a women-focused Girl Develop It organization, so I dearly understand that the issue can be divisive, but I personally find it hard to judge someone on whether they choose to be exclusive or inclusive, and not every event needs to conform to one "right" moral standard against which all others will be deemed deficient.
I'm not advocating that exclusion is the main solution (see my last paragraph), but it boils down to: do you think these events are a bad thing? Do they have a net-negative effect when it comes to balancing the gender inequality in our profession? I don't think so. Just because exclusive events exist temporarily while the imbalance is so great, doesn't mean inclusive events can't continue to thrive.
Taking a principled stand against them means you don't support them and think they detract rather than contribute. If that's honestly your stance, I guess we just disagree on that. I will happily send my daughter to one of these events when she is old enough, but I hope they aren't necessary anymore by that time.
> but it boils down to: do you think these events are a bad thing?
And I guess what I failed to express that it doesn't have to be a binary 'good' or 'bad'. I personally don't judge inclusivity or exclusivity as either good or bad, nor do I see why anyone should, beyond determining what it means to them. If Boy Scouts of America want to exclude certain demographics, fine -- it's their club after all, but I don't want to participate in that, so I won't. Similarly, if Girls Who Code want to exclude certain demographics, that is also fine with me, and I still don't want to participate.
I'm not making a value judgement on whether or not they're good or bad, but am instead deciding whether or not I personally want to be party to exclusion. For me, usually, the answer to that question is 'No'.
That's totally fair. Thanks for explaining. I'm on the opposite side of that, but I can see where you're coming from. I could see my daughter or some other young girl benefitting from this type of instruction so I wouldn't hesitate to volunteer with them again. I also see no shortage of opportunities for my son to learn about coding, so I don't think it's a detriment to him. I'd much rather send them to the same place, but if it's 95% male, then I can understand why a girl would rather have a different environment to start out in.
> I can understand why a girl would rather have a different environment to start out in.
So can I, which is why I make no value judgements on those people who prefer exclusiveness to inclusiveness. That said, I'd much prefer to teach my (also not hypothetical daughter) the value of inclusivity, and as such, where it makes sense, I prefer to eschew those groups who practice exclusivity.
Why are you going to tell your hypothetical daughter that it's fine for her to have gender-segregated events and tell your son that it's a bad thing for him to do so? (Because presumably you don't support men (or whites, etc) only clubs...)
And how do you do it without saying to your daughter that it's because she's weaker than your son and needs help? How do you explain to your son that he's so privileged that he needs handicaps to avoid hurting others? (Especially if he's not actually some alpha-male stereotype who embodies that.)
I see so much potential for accidentally hurting people with this path that I'd rather jump through a bunch of hurdles to make all events inclusive rather than reverse the original discrimination.
First, I assure you my daughter is very real and ceased to be a hypothetical about a year ago ;)
As I said earlier, I don't think gender-segregated events should exist in a balanced world, but I don't have a problem with them when there is a great imbalance and they have the potential to tilt that balance back towards equality (by existing temporarily). The whole idea of them is to create an environment welcoming to girls and get them interested in coding. I don't particularly care whether they do this by promoting only to one gender or explicitly allowing only one gender; that's logistics. I care that if we can provide more girls and women with an accessible pathway into software, that's a good thing, because once CS classes are and industry are more gender-balanced, we won't need these types of camps.
Calling it "weakness" to gravitate towards something that other members of your gender are doing is misplaced, in my opinion. My computer engineering classes were roughly 95% male and I'm not so naive to think that those were exactly welcoming enviornments for women.
To deny these pathways is to claim that the status quo is fine and that this inequality is either meant to be or will somehow solve itself. I don't believe either of those things.
I don't really understand what "handicaps" the existence of an all-girl coding camp represents to men or boys. There are a plethora of options for us/them. Who is getting really, genuinely hurt by this, in your opinion?
> I assure you my daughter is very real and ceased to be a hypothetical about a year ago
Heh. "Hypothetical child or children of unspecified gender".
> Calling it "weakness" to gravitate towards something that other members of your gender are doing is misplaced
There's a difference between doing something and discovering that most of the people doing it are your gender, and doing something that a higher-power (the event organizers) made gender-segregated.
And I don't mean there's a weakness in the person choosing the activity, I mean there's an apparent one you the parent are compensating for. Like if the event in question was basketball camps and you put your child in "Basketball for Short & Slow People". All the female-only events have a real taint of keeping out the strong performers so the weak can win too. imho it changes things from a primarily female-centric event which happens to cover programming to a people-centric event which forbids the "obviously" superior boys. What better way to make people feel second-class?
> I'm not so naive to think that those were exactly welcoming enviornments for women.
Agreed. But that seems like the problem to solve, by making sure that the events we organize aren't hostile to anyone. But anyone is far wider than women, and the offenders are far more diverse than men.
> I don't really understand what "handicaps" the existence of an all-girl coding camp represents to men or boys.
Not that there is a handicap, but that your son would feel like he's being given one so that he's on equal footing - just because he's male.
> Who is getting really, genuinely hurt by this, in your opinion?
Everyone. Both children, and all of society.
Your daughter would feel less sense of accomplishment, your son would feel that his success is less important to you than hers or that he's already good so why strive. Children of either gender who don't learn in the stereotypical way the group leaders think they should and are thus less-served by the program. Trans kids would suffer from more physical-gender stereotyping and all these gender-specific camps would just prolong gender segregation for everyone.
It's not an either-or question though. I don't think you should ignore traditional sexism, which I agree is huge pretty much everywhere including many classrooms. But I think we should do more-inclusive things, not less, to combat it. Things that help everyone, not that exclude.
There's a real reason to have mentors who look like you, in whatever ways you see yourself, but not I think, to be separated from those who are different.
On most of your points we are not too far apart, but I really have to take issue with this:
> Like if the event in question was basketball camps and you put your child in "Basketball for Short & Slow People". All the female-only events have a real taint of keeping out the strong performers so the weak can win too.
An all-girl introductory coding camp is like a baksetball camp for "short & slow" players? Girls are weak when it comes to software and boys are strong?
Learning to code is not a competitive sport. I think it's a really ugly comparison, to be honest. It's all-girl to encourage female participation and has absolutely nothing to do with ability. Any presumptions of ability being brought into the discussion is being injected by your own viewpoints.
>Girls are weak when it comes to software and boys are strong?
That's precisely what you are implying by supporting coding camps "for girls"!
Any time you create an event restricted to some group unrelated to skill level, it makes it sound like something inherent to the group makes their abilities different.
>Any time you create an event restricted to some group unrelated to skill level, it makes it sound like something inherent to the group makes their abilities different
Not at all. That is completely you bringing your prejudices into the equation.
Do gyms have womens-only sections because women are not as good as men at going to the gym?! No, it's about comfort and an alternative to a male-dominated environment.
If girls exposed to coding through camps end up enjoying it and going on to CS in school, balancing out the classrooms (which will naturally lead to more balance without the needs for exclusionary events), that's not a bad thing IMHO and there is no harm done. This is just something to try and kickstart momentum away from the status quo of the huge imbalance there is.
>That is completely you bringing your prejudices into the equation
Says the person advocating for special women's-only classes, implying they are not capable of participating in mixed gender environments.
>that's not a bad thing IMHO and there is no harm done.
Except to the kids that were refused from entering the class due to their gender. They were deprived of whatever the teacher and their would-be peers had to offer.
I don't know where you live, but in my area for each female-specific coding event there are 10s or 100s without restriction that are male dominated. Again, this is like claiming that the existence of women's only gyms infringes on your ability to find a place to work out.
> Do gyms have womens-only sections because women are not as good as men at going to the gym?!
"Infringes on your ability" never was the question.
There always were many clubs open to women - only a few here and there were men-only. In fact, by the time we got rid of men's only clubs they were rarely very influential so you can't even really argue that they were special. But, obviously I think, we aren't getting rid of men's only clubs simply to give women the choice of 50 clubs instead of 45, but because we feel it's unfair for people to be excluded.
> Learning to code is not a competitive sport.
Right, so setup an event that is not and it'll be appropriate for all learners, of either gender. This is the sort I prefer to attend, fwiw.
But if you make it competitive (offering prizes, recognition, or mentors for instance) don't be surprised if people treat it that way.
> Any presumptions of ability being brought into the discussion is being injected by your own viewpoints.
Why are there paralympics, if not to give the paralympians a chance against the uninjured?
> I think it's a really ugly comparison, to be honest.
How it makes you feel is seldom related to the truth.
Also, not that your comfort would matter either way, I think you're hearing me say that there's an actual skill difference, which I am not, and I do not see one amongst my work peers. I'm talking about the message inherent in segregated events.
> It's all-girl to encourage female participation and has absolutely nothing to do with ability.
How does making an event "no males" encouraging? That says a lot of things, but "You're just as good" is not one of them. How about just making the event about things that the girls in question care about?
And, even if it had only positive connotations, why is it fine to have all-girls events but not all-boys events?
False equivalence in your examples. The gp didn't say he would refuse to go to events that happened to be all girls. He would refuse to present at events that prevented male attendees.
The massive difference is being explicitly prevented from joining based on sex, which makes your privilege rant pointless.
No, you just missed the point. You're exactly describing the difference between explicit and systemic discrimination. I will agree that they are "massively" different, because the systemic version has had an effect that is orders of magnitude greater than the explicit/exclusionary Girls-who-code type of camp.
There are no explicitly sexist rules encoded in software professions, so why are those professions predominantly occupied by men? Please don't tell me this is because you believe that men are superior at this kind of work.
>so why are those professions predominantly occupied by men
Same tired old crap. The profession is predominantly occupied by men because that's the ratio of males/females in graduating classes. You can have all of the male-hating programming clubs you want, but trying to solve some perceived systematic discrimination of an entire profession that reflects the student supply is ignorant sexism.
I applaud anyone who has the integrity to stand up against discriminatory groups like this, particularly when the mainstream discrimination is supported by a lot of people such as yourself.
If you think girl coding camps are about "male hating", then I think you've shown your true colours. You think I'm supporting discrimination and I think you're feeling threatened and aggressively defending your privilege. We'll just have to disagree because we're too far apart. All the best.
Comments like these make me very disappointed. How can you possibly be opposed to candidates from half of the Earth's population being involved in a typically male-dominated space?
Btw I TA at girl develop it classes and they're the best experiences I've ever had. Also the classes are open to all people.
I realize the knee-jerk reaction is about explicit focusing, but do you not think it's a good idea to cater to different, typically underserved demographics?
Here's a throw-away account because I know my co-workers and friends are likely to read this. I don't know anything about "girls who code" as a charitable or outreach organization. My comments are directed at two other similar-sounding groups.
A few years ago I lived on the west coast, organized a regular software meet-up, and did some volunteer time at a similarly named group (though not Girls Who Code). I volunteered as a mentor once or twice a month for about half a year, not because it was a place to teach women or children how to use Python but because it was a place that welcomed all marginalized groups: poor children, the elderly, homosexual, and of course woment and girls.
At the start of summer about 3 or 4 years ago I was approached by one of the organizers and asked to make that night my last one. I asked if it was about the quality of instruction or complaints and they explained that the organizers felt the group would be better if the mentor roles were female. Simple as that: your gender mattered if you wanted to be in a teaching role, but I was welcome to donate to the cause through donations. I left and didn't return.
A couple of years later I'd relocated to the east coast and signed up with a bunch of co-workers to volunteer at weekend programming-camp for children. By pure chance we'd assembled a equal mix of male/female and also had representatives from 5/7 continents. A couple of days before the event one of our iOS developers had to drop out so we were a 5/4 split of male to female volunteers. When we arrived at the event we were instructed that they had a requirement that the mentors be at most 50% male and so one of us would have to take a seat. I understand that they think it's important that young people see men and women are "at worst" equally talented, but I can't help but feel like we were accused of being predators that needed a female chaperone. I wonder what their reaction would have been knowing one of the women with us was transgendered…
I left and also stopped helping organize the "parent groups" (a programming language meet-up whos name would make you think it's for women but in practice was more inclusive). The company I work at is still a sponsor of that group and I have no intention to complain about even though I think the tactics of their organizers are questionable.
I realize this is all one sided and sounds like what a bigot is likely to say. I'm refusing to name organizations because I think ultimately the goal of sharing that joy I found as a young person with my first computer is a good one. My issue is with the organizers of these two particular groups who are—in my opinion—attempting to do the right thing the wrong way.
Certain personalities interpret fairness in way where one doesn't draw distinctions based on superficial attributes (gender, race, etc.?). One set of rules for all.
That may or may not be true, but it's irrelevant in this case. The bot is basically front-running the market, or trying to anyway, by trading directly on a stimulus that the market (potentially) takes time to internalize and react to.
If this worked, I'd expect the HF funds to start doing it too, and even faster, and then the advantage would be destroyed.
This is not front running (which is illegal). It's trying to be faster than people who trade manually based on the same info. The term front running has a pretty clear definition, it's roughly when a broker trades on your orders before executing them.
Ok, simple enough, go on.
> When he does, it uses sentiment analysis to determine whether his opinions are positive or negative toward those companies.
Eh, sentiment analysis isn't perfect but it has come a long way, plus Trump does typically say what he means in simplistic language.
> The bot then automatically executes trades on the relevant stocks according to the expected market reaction.
Ah market psychology. Stop. Do not pass Go. Do not collect $200. This is the tricky bit that a toy project will never get right and turns your slick algorithmic trading project into a monkey and a dart board.
Though this is a sweet example of an API mashup.