As in the most classic tradition of software development,
$ Hello world!
I've been in software development for many years, and I recently started my journey into the world of systematic trading.
Although I've been trading equities for a few years now, I never seriously got into it. I mainly copied other's investment ideas, followed hearsay and other, not very scientific, ways to make investment decisions.
Then, late in September 2022, I decided that it was about time I took a step in what is hopefully a better way of doing it. Being a software developer, the approach that felt most natural to me was that of systematic trading.
Back then I didn't have a clear idea of what it meant, although I assumed it involved writing some sort of software program that would do it more or less autonomously.
Choosing a training course
I never followed any training courses on trading or investment, so I ended up relying on my gut feeling to pick one.
There are many options out there and I went with Unger Academy. The main reason is that through their ads and the few YouTube videos I had watched, they seemed to know what they were talking about. It resonated with me, so I went with it.
What is systematic trading
The first time I heard about systematic trading I was both attracted and somewhat scared by the idea of a program running day and night, trading on my behalf and using my money to do that.
The idea of writing a program was exciting. and after all that's what I do for a living, but the thought of operating complex infrastructure was quite daunting.
Systematic trading basically boils down to:
- Coming up with a trading idea to apply to a certain asset., for example a stock, forex or futures
- Writing a program to execute it
- Backtesting it against historical data to validate it
- Using specialized software to run and automate it
Obviously, this is easier said than done, and there are considerable amounts of study and knowledge that go into it, and many decisions to be made along the way.
What to expect
In this blog I am going to document my journey, along with takeaways, struggles and useful things I create along the way.
If find that when you start learning something new, capturing it is particularly effective, both for yourself and for others who embarked on a similar journey. The beginning is when the most "aha!" moments happen, and I have collected quite a few of them already, which are worth sharing.
If there's anything that you're specifically interested into, let me know!
📡 Stay tuned