Hello, I am a new member here.
Been active as an amateur trader since last year. Before accessing PRT I found myself spending more time creating and testing systems manually (looking at charts) than I actually did trading. I even programmed my own rudimentary backtesting software where I tested a few ideas I had. With PRT, I have accelerated my learning of back-testing and system creation and I now run a few systems live. They mainly trade equities and commodities in the 15m-60m timeframe. So far, results are positive.
Have had an extensive look and tinkered with a few systems and indicators posted. Some gave me very creative ideas for systems and new combined indicators. Hopefully I can return the favour and post something of my own soon.
The money aside, I think I am drawn to algo trading for a few reasons: I am analytical, and have always interested in math, programming, psychology. I see algo programming as a game of ‘beating the system’ and interpreting the investing hivemind with technical clues.
I am full-time student but hopefully my spare time will be enough for now to get some more robust and profitable systems running.
Here are some things I have learned these last months:
- Price is precise, but not accurate.
- Spreads/commissions and technology set the limitations for what systems you can run, not the market.
- Money managment is of no importance, until it becomes of critical importance.
- Combining several timeframes is not essential, but very useful.
- The simpler and more universally backtested – the more reliable.
- With more system trading opportunities than capital, it is not overall system gain that is important, nor gain/trade, but rather gain/time-in-market.
- Choosing which systems to run live also has to be based on set factors: %drawdown, trades, mathematical expectancy, gain/time-in-market etc.
- If it’s too good to be true…
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