Hey hey,

Keen to know if people think the Strategy Builder on NT8 offers enough functionality to develop profitable robotic strategies.

Thanks

You can hack through it and get most of the indicators and basic variables into a script using the strategy builder.
In terms of "would this be profitable"... Sure, if the market is moving straight or straight down, then the standard MA crossover that ships with NT as example script could be profitable on those days. If the question is: Could someone hack through the strategy builder and create a strategy that is consistently profitable, I doubt it, but not for the more obvious reasons.

Syntax wise, you will struggle to implement any of the more complex logic, so you will be fighting an uphill battle and likely bringing a knife to a gun fight. But beyond this, I think just the skill set required to even start to analyze the market is a technical skill set. So not having this coding skill set, you will likely not have the right technical / statistical skill set either. I think this is the bigger battle for you. There may be some PHD level statisticians that don't code, but more often than not, a higher analytical skill set is matched with a higher technical skill set. These are typically highly correlated.

For sure, any discretionary trader can move their ideas to an automated trading strategy, but going from a few chart patterns (That are easy to code) to being able to get into microstructure theory and various nuances of higher level statistics will be challenging for most with a basic skill set.

All this being said, it is a great way to start, and it is an exponential improvement over just discretionary trading due to the fact that it forces you to have hard rules and honestly assess whether something works or not. There is a lot of hubris in this business and discretionary traders don't have to own too much because their rules are always changing and there edge is not something that can be tested, so they often maintain a high level of hubris and never learn from their mistakes. Moving to a coded strategy you at least have to commit to something and testing it will force you to admit something is garbage if it doesn't work.

Best of luck!

Ian

Thanks for that honest and detailed insight. It's reality checks like this that make clear the true nature of the task at hand and help prevent novice trader delusion.

Cheers

I agree with @iantg that its a great place to start. I have been trading for 3+ years now and was discretionary trading until about a year ago. I fiddled with the strategy builder making strategies trying to find edges. It wasn't until I started working with a programmer to use more advanced coding to whittle it down. I would build a basic concept in the strategy builder and then ask him to add more advanced things. I have since found several edges that have made me consistently profitable for the last 12 months. Sure beats discretionary trading simply by removing most of the emotions!