Is 100% Mechanical Trading Possible?

[Tams 20]

some trading software have "pick-from-menu" user interface.

 

all you have to do is select the indicators, parameters, etc., and the program does everything for you.

 

you can see this Ninja example

Trading Platforms. NINJATRADER. Trading System Development.

[sevensa 10]

Reminds me in grade school when you couldn't spell a word the teacher would tell you to look it up in the dictionary. You would never find it if you thought it was like KAT. Some peoples can't spell and will never be able to. Some people can sing or play the violin and some never will even with a gun pressed to the side of their head.

 

I love the other answer that there are tons "on the internet offering to make you a millionaire". Of course thats true and their all frauds. Very helpful thank you.

 

I asked a simple question and I am assuming the answer is if you are not a good trader and can't program you are out of luck. Although none of you directly answered my question in a round about way I guess you did.

 

Not sure what other answer you are really looking for then? If you don't want to program and you think the systems available on the internet are all fraud, then what is your alternative other than just give up and finding something else to do?

 

I don't agree that some people will just never be able to do something. Not everyone can be good at something and become experts, but everyone can do the basics if you are willing to put a little effort in. There are numerous threads here where people are asking for basic help and went from having no experience to be able to write some code. However, you have to take the first step yourself and not give up before you even start.

[RM686 10]

"you can see this Ninja example"

 

"Not sure what other answer you are really looking for then"

 

Downloaded Ninja awhile back to run with Trade Station. Could not get it to work. E mail support no help. They told me best solution was to delete Ninja program. Like I was saying I am not very good with computers.

 

In this post and others people responders in other posts I read have "said you have to develop your own program". Not one person has recommended a commercial trading program to use with Trade Station. Remarks like one from a previous poster was the are "ones on the internet that will make you a millionaire". Obvious he is being witty (in his own mind) and of little help.

So when you say what are you looking for how about some recommendations for some decent software to trade ETFS and stocks. In the 6 months I have been with trade station the closest I have gotten is develop your own. (Spend a few years learning programming and trying to put together a trading system?)

So the answer to you question "what are you looking for " is from the responses I have read in other newbie questions and responses I have received ed is nothing in these forums.

 

Tams thank you for you post about Ninja which I view as a sincere attempt at trying to help.

[Grey1 10]

Reminds me in grade school when you couldn't spell a word the teacher would tell you to look it up in the dictionary. You would never find it if you thought it was like KAT. Some peoples can't spell and will never be able to. Some people can sing or play the violin and some never will even with a gun pressed to the side of their head.

 

I love the other answer that there are tons "on the internet offering to make you a millionaire". Of course thats true and their all frauds. Very helpful thank you.

 

I asked a simple question and I am assuming the answer is if you are not a good trader and can't program you are out of luck. Although none of you directly answered my question in a round about way I guess you did.

 

100% mechanical trading is the future of the market,, there will be war of the codes making the market even more efficient resulting in discretionary trading becoming a thing of the past . Algo trading is not new and most business is done using codes,,,

I use 100% aglo code myself

 

Grey1

[Tams 20]

...

Downloaded Ninja awhile back to run with Trade Station. Could not get it to work. E mail support no help. They told me best solution was to delete Ninja program. Like I was saying I am not very good with computers.

 

In this post and others people responders in other posts I read have "said you have to develop your own program". Not one person has recommended a commercial trading program to use with Trade Station. Remarks like one from a previous poster was the are "ones on the internet that will make you a millionaire". Obvious he is being witty (in his own mind) and of little help.

So when you say what are you looking for how about some recommendations for some decent software to trade ETFS and stocks. In the 6 months I have been with trade station the closest I have gotten is develop your own. (Spend a few years learning programming and trying to put together a trading system?)

So the answer to you question "what are you looking for " is from the responses I have read in other newbie questions and responses I have received ed is nothing in these forums.

 

Tams thank you for you post about Ninja which I view as a sincere attempt at trying to help.

 

 

 

if you have TradeStation, why would you need anything else?

 

 

included in TradeStation are 100s of autotrade examples.

you can open up the code and explore the logic and see how people manipulate and analyze data.

 

TradeStation's manuals and tutorials are the best in the industry -- they have over 20 years of accumulated knowledge and experience.

if you can't understand TradeStation, there is no point in trying anything else, because there won't be anything more comprehensive and easy to understand than TradeStation.

Edited September 22, 2009 by Tams

[forrestang 10]

100% mechanical trading is the future of market,, there will be war of the codes making the market even more efficient resulting in discretionary trading becomming a thing of the past . Algo trading is not new and most business is done using codes,,,

I use 100% aglo code myself

 

Grey1

Discretionary trading will never go away IMO.

 

Algos do work though, but then they still have to be managed, via DD and when to pull them offline and replace.... so that is discretionary in itself.

[Tams 20]

100% mechanical trading is the future of the market,, there will be war of the codes making the market even more efficient resulting in discretionary trading becoming a thing of the past . Algo trading is not new and most business is done using codes,,,

I use 100% aglo code myself

 

Grey1

 

 

This is a big World... there is always room for discretionary trading.

[Grey1 10]

This is a big World... there is always room for discretionary trading.

 

IMHO Discretionary trading is not going to go away so soon I agree,, but the odds of win for a discretionary trader becomes so low that any 1 in his right mind would not look at it as a business,,

 

Grey1

[BlowFish 10]

what if you dont know programing? are there any mechnical systems for charts and ETFS that one can buy.

 

Not only that there are brokers that will run the popular ones for you so all you have to do is read your satements each month.

 

The thing is with 100% mechanical systems is there is still discretion to be applied. e.g. When to retire them, when to change parameters, how much to risk, which markets to run them on etc. etc.

[RM686 10]

"Not only that there are brokers that will run the popular ones for you so all you have to do is read your satements each month."

 

 

 

 

can you name 2 or 3 popular mechanical trading systems for stocks and ETFS that you are refering to?

[ant 10]

IMHO Discretionary trading is not going to go away so soon I agree,, but the odds of win for a discretionary trader becomes so low that any 1 in his right mind would not look at it as a business,,

 

Grey1

 

I disagree. I am of the opinion that traders with strategies that can be automated by computers do not have a lasting edge whereas discretionary traders that consider context and apply market logic do (i.e., traders with strategies that cannot be programmed or automated). Successful trading in the future will require creativity and pattern recognition - the sort of stuff where human beings excel over computers. I believe that discretionary traders have a better shot at competing in the markets, can better adapt to the ever changing markets, and are not in direct competition with the automated strategies run by institutions. A book that I would recommend on this is A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. I'm sure there are exceptions, but this is my general opinion.

Edited September 23, 2009 by ant

[sevensa 10]

I disagree. I am of the opinion that traders with strategies that can be automated by computers do not have a lasting edge whereas discretionary traders that consider context and apply market logic do (i.e., traders with strategies that cannot be programmed or automated). Successful trading in the future will require creativity and pattern recognition - the sort of stuff where human beings excel over computers. And this coming from a software engineer. I believe that discretionary traders have a better shot at competing in the markets, can adap to the ever changing market, and are not in direct competition with the automated strategies run by institutions. A book that I would recommend on this is A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. I'm sure there are exceptions, but this is my general opinion.

 

You must not be in your right mind then...

[ant 10]

You must not be in your right mind then...

 

Perhaps not, but let's see where this whole discretionary thing takes me.

[Kiwi 16]

I disagree. I am of the opinion that traders with strategies that can be automated by computers do not have a lasting edge whereas discretionary traders that consider context and apply market logic do (i.e., traders with strategies that cannot be programmed or automated). Successful trading in the future will require creativity and pattern recognition - the sort of stuff where human beings excel over computers. I believe that discretionary traders have a better shot at competing in the markets, can better adapt to the ever changing markets, and are not in direct competition with the automated strategies run by institutions. A book that I would recommend on this is A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink. I'm sure there are exceptions, but this is my general opinion.

 

 

Interesting.

 

I don't think Daniel had experience of trading. Unless you are the one in a million who are not stressed when money is at risk then your brain operates differently during (and at various times during) the trading process.

 

Personally I have been coding the clearest elements of my discretionary trading to 1. take me out of the process for all sorts of reasons, 2. allow better testing to avoid the impact of cognitive distortions, and 3. permit me to trade more markets simultaneously and thus focus on the best setups/processes.

 

This has been interesting and one element that is of interest is that I also don't believe that each mechanical edge lasts forever - the markets twist and turn. Longer term system developers try to adapt with atr measures etc. I am taking the other approach which I think is more appropriate to short term systems where the market participants care about specific numbers and movement numbers and will adapt key numbers over time as the markets twist.

 

So real time is mechanical systems - mid term is discretionary/optimization based tuning - long term is system retirement and birth.

 

So - systems don't last forever but who cares?

[Grey1 10]

I disagree. I am of the opinion that traders with strategies that can be automated by computers do not have a lasting edge whereas discretionary traders that consider context and apply market logic do (i.e., traders with strategies that cannot be programmed or automated)..

 

New pattern recognition algos using fuzzy logic and its subset are dynamic and adapt themselves to market behaviour every day this is why they are so sharp.. You can not trade the market based on if MA1 crossed MA2 then buy for the rest of your life,,, you need codes which are adaptive and are self thought in real time using Neural Net and chaotic theories to tackle millions of combination of various inputs,,

WAR OF THE CODES WAR AGAINST THE WEAKEST

 

Grey1

[Trader333 10]

Iraj,

 

Does this apply to all trading or is it specific to stocks ?

 

 

 

Paul

[Grey1 10]

Iraj,

 

Does this apply to all trading or is it specific to stocks ?

 

 

 

Paul

 

PAUL ,

 

This applies to all effecient market ,, the instrument is of no importance what so ever,,

 

Grey1

[Tams 20]

New pattern recognition algos using fuzzy logic and its subset are dynamic and adapt themselves to market behaviour every day this is why they are so sharp.. You can not trade the market based on if MA1 crossed MA2 then buy for the rest of your life,,, you need codes which are adaptive and are self thought in real time using Neural Net and chaotic theories to tackle millions of combination of various inputs,,

WAR OF THE CODES WAR AGAINST THE WEAKEST

 

Grey1

 

 

very interesting....

 

can you post a chart(or whatever illustration) showing such workout?

[Grey1 10]

very interesting....

 

can you post a chart(or whatever illustration) showing such workout?

 

Hi

 

You can not show a complicated concept on chart,, it is not a double top or a trend line chart pattern which can be show using a chart,,

 

Using a NN the ALGO looks for a chart pattern which could be totally different to one TRADITIONAL CHART PATTERN ANALYST EYE's is used to and once found it trades it in when it expects to re occur again.. I donot like to advertise for any software but if you search the net then you will find at least 3 commercial ones available .. if you could not find it then email me tgafar@btinternet.com and i give you a name .. The rest is up to you buddy

 

Grey1

[MoreYummy 10]

Keith,

 

What is CoolTrade?

 

Im also looking for a way to program my semi discretionary strategy. Without success for many months.

 

So hopefully this can be done successfully.

 

Jan

[Grey1 10]

Keith,

 

What is CoolTrade?

 

Im also looking for a way to program my semi discretionary strategy. Without success for many months.

 

So hopefully this can be done successfully.

 

Jan

 

Mine has two modules ,,, Heuristic and a mathematical module,, the heuristic algo uses fuzzy rules but the maths algo exploits the conventional maths..The fuzzy algo causes issues in TS8.6 which I donot yet know why it is but the maths module is easy enough to code .. the screen shot below shows the first trade including P/L

[Trader333 10]

Iraj,

 

You said earlier that automated trading is almost the only way to go, was this intr-day only or for EOD as well ?

 

Also have you now switched to TS8.6 ?

 

 

Paul

[Grey1 10]

Iraj,

 

You said earlier that automated trading is almost the only way to go, was this intr-day only or for EOD as well ?

 

Also have you now switched to TS8.6 ?

 

 

Paul

 

I switched to TS8.6 because of the complication with TWS's API and TS2000i .. it was not robust at all specially when I needed to fake my order flow on a larger size hence other algo codes were trading against me .

,,, My swing trades are more and less based on FA and only use TA for entry .

hope this is clear

 

grey1

[Grey1 10]

This is the screeen shot of the next trade and the application of a heuristic ( discretionary ) trade and a 100% mathematical trade,,, the heuristic module is adaptive and follows the intra days's market cycle which is dynamic but the mathematical algo is only an static view of the market,, if you look at the entry points for both trades then you see a vast difference in exit strategy ,,,

 

hope this sheds some light on the use of discretionary trading in today's market,,, these are all LIVE real time trading P/L

[MoreYummy 10]

So in other word, it is your own software, not some software that you can use to put some numbers and make strategy. Which is what you stated at the previous post.