To begin coding, clone the sample algorithm on the front page to get familiarized with the IDE. You can then backtest the strategy, for free, using historical data from 2002 - Now. When you run a full backtest, you can see how your algorithm would have performed in the past - you can see your returns, Sharpe ratio, and other metrics.
Once you're comfortable with the syntax and mechanisms, the community is a great place to look for trading ideas to try on your own. Try cloning an algorithm posted in a thread to begin experimenting. If you get stuck, post to the forums - they're a friendly bunch and will be happy to help out.
Of course, past performance is not indicative of future results. When you're ready, you can paper-trade your algo (trade using fake money) on the live market. It's free on Quantopian and a risk-free method to see how your algo performs in the market. And then, the last step is to connect your account to Interactive Brokers and begin live trading with real money. This blog post was an update of the live trading pilot program.
(Disclaimer: I work for Quantopian. But I'd be happy to help answer any questions! Feel free to reach out to us directly as well, feedback@quantopian.com)
We run an IB gateway and in the Quantopian UI you enter your IB credentials - but we do not store your password. You then deploy your algo and see a dashboard with updates from the market.
The guy "hasn't got a clue". Basically, inventing random algorithms (even if they back test ok) is a good way of losing all your money. Fundamentally, there are people who write algorithms based on past prices, largely trend following. They generally think they are doing well, without realising that they are making money by being generally long a rising market. Then they lose it all. Then there are the other people who have inside information, largely details of other peoples trades they can front run. They generally make money over the long run. You are not them.
I know very few traders who have either gone mechanical or semi with their own money. It's less about the algorithms, but more about discipline, intuition and knowledge. All of the traders that I mention knowing, are actuaries, who still spend a lot of time working on their models, always backtesting and most importantly, spending a lot of time on risk management, because futures are unpredictable like the future. I tried trading.
Reality is that if I have $10'000 to trade, unless I am successful, which is likely a low probability; 10% of that goes to brokers for all the spreads I pay over time, and the other 90% simply goes to another man/woman/company's pockets.
The one thing that I discounted was the adrenaline rush in seeing a certain currency pair or index go up by a few bips in a matter of milliseconds and that translating into gains/losses in my account. If you do it to 'try' it out, stay away. If you don't understand the effect of a certain EMA converging/whatevering with another EMA, stay out. If Bollinger rings of a friend's surname more than a band, stay out. etc. To even be extreme, I would equate high-leverage trading to gambling for us folk who don't have a lot of knowledge, and I'd go further and equate it to drugs for those who have less of a clue.
As the parent post said, stick to value investing.
Disclaimer: I've spent about 6 years trading in my spare time, learnt lots etc. but called it quits 3 years back to focus on something better with my time. I'm currently 10e10/4-.5 years old.
