etink

That's the hard part! When it comes to testing and tweaking, whether it's for risk parameters or to maximize PnL, that sort of thing I'll figure out over time, and most likely with a lot of pain. :doh: It's the initial strategies (or lack thereof) which are tripping me up. I'm hoping to find a good list of known-good basic strategies which I can implement and test, if such a list even exists. For example, to just make one up: "trade GOOG and SPY in tandem, if either moves X% away from the other, buy/sell the other and go flat when they return to within Y%". Am I asking for something unreasonable? On the one hand, if it were this easy, I'm guessing a lot more people would be doing it. But on the other hand, everyone has to start somewhere, right? I'm guessing no one sets out intending to build an extremely complex model. Aren't there "building block"-type strategies to cut my teeth on?

brownsfan - Thanks for the book recommendations! Several of these look great; I'll be picking them up soon. BlowFish - As I wrote in the thread description, I'm interested in algorithmic trading, not discretionary trading. I've tried tapping the expertise of many of our better traders, but they all respond the same way - they can't really explain what they're doing in any way that would translate into an algorithm, they enter and exit when it "feels right". I don't have enough posts to send a PM, so let me also thank the poster who replied to me privately. May I post your reply to this thread, so that others may benefit from it?

I work in IT for a large trading firm, and I have a degree in CS. I have full access to our broker and to our servers, and am a competent programmer. I have the markets under my fingertips, and the ability to access them, but I have no idea what to do with them. Despite having worked here for over a year, I know very little about actual trading. Edit: about trading strategies. I know how our traders do what they do(eg, bids, offers, order entry, etc), but I know almost nothing about the why. Naturally, I turned to the internet. I can find lots of information on options, derivatives, and futures trading, but my firm is equities-only, and day trading only (taking home overnight positions is generally frowned upon). So, where do I go from here? If I had a strategy or plan I liked, I could code it, backtest it, tweak it, trade it in simulation, and eventually live if it proved to be profitable. But I can't - I'm stuck at the ideas/learning stage. What are the best resources for someone in my position? Any websites or books you can recommend would be greatly appreciated.