When you say yes to making a living but as an employee is that because of at an institution you are trading with much larger sum of money and hence there is enough return to pay for your salary bonus and then some or something else like getting a regular paycheck in a other wise very volatile return world? Essentially is the amount capital the key thing or something else.
Also how do traders typically come up with a strategy? Original insight or mostly copying the herd with their own variations?
More capital is obviously better. But more importantly, what happens when you're not making money? How do you control your anxieties when your broker ac balance halves due to a trend reversing? Are you prepared to monitor your strategy 24/7? At a firm, there's probably someone there to do it for you - at home, it's just you. Trading is a casino and the emotions it imparts are similar - euphoria when you win, depression when you lose. If you have a job, you at least have a base salary that will bolster your living standard - without it, you're going to struggle in the bad times (unless, of course, you're already rich).
Regarding strategy generation, it's a mix. Quants like me almost always take the systematic, research like approach - analyse data, see if you can ascertain any predictable patterns and then paper trade them in the live market. If it makes money on paper, it might make money in the real market. Then just iterate and refine. Some guys do trade with their gut, but are rarely successful.
How did you analyze data and results. Did you use a commercial backtesting service or it’s common business practice to use in house data that these firms are sitting on - data that they have acquired over the years?
The OP you asked worked at an Investment Bank. This is not exactly the pinnacle of algo trading (at least in US/Europe) as they are hampered by regulations about prop trading etc.
I work at a big quant/algo prop trading firm. The reason you can't compete is that most successful algorithmic trading relies on economy of scale.
Yes capital to trade with is one aspect, but more importantly is the amount of knowledge needed to carry this off. Building a safe, robust strategy is hard even if you have a working idea.
It requires probably top 1% knowledge in distributed systems, Linux admin, networking, database administration, security and more.
The chance that any individual (or even team of less than 5 people) has those skills covered in addition to the quantitative know how to actually come up with a strategy is quite small.
There is a reason why algo trading is dominated by large firms. Working at somebody like Citadel or Optiver, if you say "oh damn, there's this weird effect on our server. When x happens I get a period of noticeable slowdown" they will turn around and say "Ok, well John here is a core dev on the Linux kernel, he'll come to your desk and help you figure it out".
Imagine that but with every problem pretty much. Running trading strategies you will hit problems. The level of work to overcome all of them satisfactorily whilst not degrading your edge is so much work for an individual I suspect you would burn out pretty sharply.
OP here. While my division was in an investment bank, we were a prop desk that was eventually spun out of the bank, so we did have a "hedge-fund" vibe. I think what you're saying is spot on. The level of manual effort required to keep an automated system competitive and functional is often grossly underestimated by amateur traders.
When you say yes to making a living but as an employee is that because of at an institution you are trading with much larger sum of money and hence there is enough return to pay for your salary bonus and then some or something else like getting a regular paycheck in a other wise very volatile return world? Essentially is the amount capital the key thing or something else.
Also how do traders typically come up with a strategy? Original insight or mostly copying the herd with their own variations?