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I hope to forge a career in the trading industry in the future, but I worry that trading will become more and more automated, until there will be no more traders in trading: just programmers and computers! For all you seasoned veteran traders out there, is there an opposing argument?
Thanks!
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I attempted to automate using Mulicharts a few months back and was just flat out horrible... Mainly because it never did good live trade. For me do I just Options and not sure you can automate that.
Automating trade is a hot new topic I see alot of websites are talking about.. But I don't see anybody claiming to be making good money. What the past did doesn't mean you will make that in the future.
But if you planning to automate I would suggest Multicharts... Get demo account and give it a try but you going to need to learn to program. I think bigmike had a video on it and comparing it to ninjatrader.
@ Johnsoftroy, I recently visited with a $3B+ hedge fund that also had a full load of programmers on staff, and they said the majority of their profits still came from human traders. I think the medium term future is a human discretionary trader armed with assisted computer automation. e.g. risk management, scaling in, etc. are all automated.
But for sure, some strategies now like statistical arbitrage are now fully in the domain of computers, very little human involvement.
Easy Language or power language I think its called. Big mike has a video somewhere on here where he shows how to program a basic automated trading..... (To me it looked beyond complex because I have no clue about programming).
This. There's a lot of chatter about where AI is going, and even some thinking that it's going to be heading towards some sort of future like that of the early nuclear waste ventures. But really, there's so much that I just don't see being able to get completely transitioned to automation.
Perhaps we can liken this to a game of poker to express the edge that a human brain might retain over a computer.
In a no limit game of poker, a computer can calculate the odds of the the cards opponents are holding with ruthless precision. HOWEVER, if a emotional human brain still controls how much cash to pull out of the piggy bank and put on the table raising to table stakes to absurd amounts (say for example there's only $10k in the pot, $50k total bank rolls on the table, but I decide to throw down $1M), then there's always an element of randomness that we control as a human mind.
Moreover, for at least the foreseeable future, the human mind will be able to call the bluffs, read between the lines of central bankers, gauge true fear in the emotional sense, to get that last edge that a computer won't be able to calculate.
So going back to the analogy, I sincerely believe me as an astute reader of the human condition to call the bluff based upon body language, assisted by a computer tracking previous betting patterns and doing all the mathematical odds calculations for me will trump a computer doing all of the above, but not being able to read the human element sitting on the other side of the game theory. At least for now.
If you're not a programmer today, starting down that path with the intent of writing (profitable ) automated strategies will take you a lot of time - not to discourage (coming from someone who's been "doing IT for 30 years"), it's just that it's not something one should take on lightly...
That being said, there ARE ways of leveraging other platforms that might take some of the hard work out of starting from scratch by writing the actual code for you. Trading System Lab is one that comes to mind. I've never used it and have absolutely no connection to them but am rather intrigued at what can be done with machine learning as applied to trading so I checked out their website and posted a comment here on nexusfi.com (formerly BMT).
As with most things in life, "good things don't come cheap" - their licensing is rather steep, but if it's as good as what's he shows in this demo, it's really not that bad (of course that assumes you have $60k ).
This is just not correct.
Most the "tells" and that in poker are complete fiction and things people make up after the fact. University of Alberta has a an incredibly strong heads up no limit bot right now. I have software that can solve all kinds of no limit spots myself. Google "solving poker in ipython"
If you want a trading career you already are going to need to be very well educated in a quantitative field. China is cranking out 50,000 PhD holders a year.
Very very limited trading jobs vs massive amounts of qualified candidates. Even with a PhD in a quantitative field you would need a ton of luck to even get your foot in the door. The only way to get around that is to have a superior network.