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30/03/2018 (2) How can a beginner with little mathematical/no prior trading experience break into quantitative analysis
tive analysis and algorithmic trading?…
Quantiacs High-Frequency Trading Algorithmic Trading +4 Related Questions
How can a beginner with little mathematical/no Which are the best algorithmic trading strategies?
prior trading experience break into quantitative So it can trade automatically stocks/FOREX/CFDs
with no risk to the money traded? What is t...
analysis and algorithmic trading? Is it possible to
teach yourself? How? Which books should one read? Is continuous mathematics a must for algorithmic
trading? Can one use only discrete math?
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Will quant trading replace human trading?
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quantitative/algorithm based trading?
Lucas Liew, Quant @ AlgoTrading101.com Does quantitative trading really work?

Updated May 4, 2017
Will algorithmic trading die out?
I was in your position 5 years ago. Through that period, I started learning and
Could algorithmic trading take over traditional
building algorithmic trading systems on my own for 3 years and took on an algo
trading?
trading role (non-HFT) at proprietary trading firm for 2 years. The way I did it
may not be the best way but it worked for me.  Ask New Question
More Related Questions
PS. These methods do not apply if you want to do High-Frequency Trading.
Question Stats
1. Absorb (almost) all publicly available information
1,220 Public Followers
You need to know three areas: Finance/Trading, Math (especially statistics) and
342,794 Views
Programming.
Last Asked Oct 26
Edits
Recommended Readings:
Evaluation and Optimization of Trading Strategies – Pardo (Great

insights on methods on building and testing trading strategies)
Trade your way to Financial Freedom – Van K Tharp (Ridiculous-Click

bait title aside, this book is a great overview to mechanical trading
systems)
Quantitative Trading – Ernest Chan (Great introduction to algo trading

on a retail level.)
Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners –

Larry Harris (Market microstructure is the science of how exchanges
function and what actually happens when a trade is placed. It is
important to know this information even though you are just starting
out)
Algorithmic Trading & DMA – Barry Johnson (Shed light on banks’

execution algorithms. This is not directly applicable your algo trading
but it is good to know)
The Quants – Scott Patterson (War stories of some top quants. Good as a
bedtime read)
Beat the Market: A Scientific Stock Market System - Edward O. Thorp

(Provides a good foundation of how to think about inefficiencies in the
markets. Edward Thorp one of the pioneers of Quantitative
Finance/Trading, I suggest reading up on all his works)
https://www.quora.com/How-can-a-beginner-with-little-mathematical-no-prior-trading-experience-break-into-quantitative-analysis-and-algorithmic-trading-Is-it-poss
30/03/2018 (2) How can a beginner with little mathematical/no prior trading experience break into quantitative analysis and algorithmic trading?…
Recommended Courses/Sites:
Quantopian (Code, research, and discuss ideas with the community.

Uses Python)
AlgoTrading101 (Disclaimer: I own this site/course. Learn robot

design theories, market theories and coding. Uses MQL4)
http://asirikuy.com (Learn trading concepts and backtesting theories.

They recently developed their own backtesting and trading platform so
this part is still new to me. But their knowledge base on trading
concepts are good.)
Recommended Blogs/Forums (these includes finance, trading and algo

trading forums):
https://www.quantnet.com
http://mechanicalforex.com/
http://www.forexfactory.com/
http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/
https://www.quantstart.com/
Recommended Programming Languages:

If you know what products you want to trade, find suitable trading platforms for
these products. Then learn the programming language API of this
platform/backtesters.
If you starting out, I would recommend Quantopian (stocks only), Quantconnect

(stocks and FX) or Metatrader 4 (FX and CFDs on equity indices, stocks and
commodities). The programming languages used are Python, C# and MQL4
respectively.
2. Test and apply your knowledge – Develop your own understanding
Try and try again! Test and apply your knowledge. Build robots. Backtest them
and run them live (on small amounts of money). The aim here is to understand
what works and doesn’t, and to know why.
3. Meet and partner with others
1+1=3. There is definitely synergy when working with or discussing ideas with
others in the same field. Meet and partner up with others (preferably
experienced ones). You learn exponentially when you have people to bounce
ideas with.
4. Get a job at a trading firm and get a mentor
You don’t say! Alright this part may be tricky if you don’t have strong academic
qualifications.
Let me first lay down the bad news: It is incredibly difficult to get into top quant
trading firms without Masters or Ph.D. in a quantitative subject (Computational
Finance, Physics, Engineering, Statistics etc). It is almost impossible if you want
to get into a HFT role without these qualifications (unless your dad owns the
firm!).
Good news: There are 2 ways in which you can get into a decent hedge fund.
A) Build a strong track record using algo trading. If you have a strong record (on
a decent amount of money) over a few years and can convince the guys at the
fund that you have some sort of trading edge. They may give you a chance
(although they may just want your strategies and kick you out later).
B) Have something to offer. Sometimes, manual traders want to build an algo

trading team and don’t mind taking on fresh guys with some quantitative skills.
Other times, firms need "number crunchers" and will take on someone who
exhibit decent programming skills.
These should be enough to get you started. Some ending notes, the
trading/investment space is getting incredibly competitive. Many strategies that
used to work don’t any more. Personally, I think profitable trading systems/ideas
have about a 2-3 years lifespan before others catch on to it. You need to innovate
to stay ahead of the game, but innovation takes experience, wits, time,
infrastructure and money.
Edit: Added a book by Edward O. Thorp.

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Dirk Roth, I'm working for Quantiacs, a marketplace for quant trading
strategies
Answered Dec 1, 2015 · Upvoted by Nathan Doromal, Developer on HFT systems
The most important is to learn how to code so that you can implement your
ideas and test them on data (e.g. Python). Platforms like Quantiacs - Market
Place For Algorithmic Trading Systems provide an algo-building-toolbox and
backtesting data. Here are a few links with books, online courses, videos....:
Videos:
Quantiacs LLC
Page on coursera.org

Paper:
Page on decal.org

Books:
Quantitative Trading: How to Build Your Own Algorithmic Trading Business:
Ernie Chan: 9780470284889: Amazon.com: Books
Quantitative Trading and Money Management, Revised Edition: Fred Gehm:
9781557385857: Amazon.com: Books
Inside the Black Box: The Simple Truth About Quantitative Trading (Wiley
Finance): Rishi K. Narang: 9780470432068: Amazon.com: Books
How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street's Elite: Richard R.
Lindsey, Barry Schachter: 9780470452578: Amazon.com: Books

Python Coding:
Welcome to Python.org
The Python Tutorial
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
Page on wikibooks.org .Learn data science online, for free
Learn to code
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Jay Maniar
Answered Apr 19, 2017
This is something I was asking around a few months back to people. How do I
break into Quantitative/Algorithmic Trading when I don’t even know how to get
started.
And this was after having a B.Tech degree (2014 passout), being a CFA level 2
candidate who was also preparing for FRM exams to understand risk, basically I
had little clue about algorithmic trading and had just heard hype around how
the future in markets is going to be algorithmic trading.
I have a very strong inclination towards understanding portfolio management

but at the same time wanted to stay in touch with the recent developments in
the stock markets.
After B.Tech, I did not join an IT company (Information Technology) but

pursued my interest in finance. After Doing commodity research for a couple of
years, I understood there were market inefficiencies which could be tapped by
using technical indicators, quant modelling and strategies.
I researched more into efficient market hypothesis (basically to understand how

to exploit market inefficiencies) w.r.t. Indian markets and US markets.
So I started applying at algorithmic trading startups and companies which

would give me that kind of exposure and successfully switched my job a few
months back.
So basically, I am suggesting experience is the key but since you want to tie the
bell around the cat’s neck yourself, a hunger to learn is what I think should be
needed for you as a beginner to get started with quantitative trading.
Check out these links: should help a beginner
Getting Started with Algorithmic Trading
Pyhton for Trading
Quantra
Upvote 2 Downvote
Ross Ledehrman, studied Quantitative Finance

Answered Aug 10, 2017
This is a bit of a tricky question. I’ll share my story given I feel I am an example
of a ‘beginner with no fucking experience’ into a full-blown career into
quantitative finance, from roles to being a quant as well as being an i-banker.
When I started trading, I was young and stupid, I had not much background in
Maths, let alone a background in anything. I wasn’t yet 18. I was obsessed about
how the financial markets worked. This as my dad received expensive
investment letters in the mail (they don’t do that anymore) from the bank
packed with stock recommendations. I saw my dad earn more money with
stocks than I did working a crap supermarket job 5 days a week after school. All
he did was follow advice given by the bank.. Could it be that easy?
Given I was below 18, my dad opened another trading account under his name, I
could put money there and started trading. I felt I had an advantage, because my
dad received these letters from his private banker about stock
recommendations. I noticed quickly, that these recommendations were full of
shit unfortunately...
The reasons which were given why a firm would go up or down just didn’t make
sense to me. You don’t have to be 40 years old and 22 years of experience in
trading to smell that something is off. 95 out of a 100 times it is just common
sense. It could be as simple as, a firm get’s 10% of it’s revenue out of country X,
while 90% is country Y. And the entire recommendation bit in the letter would
be about how that particular 10% in country X could grow to 15%.. ‘Buy buy buy!’
I was still in high school, but my grades suffered. Trading was much more fun
that reading how my bones were called. I fucked up a serious amount of
modules at high school. I never studied, did all logic thinking. So only did well
in mathematics and economics.
I enjoyed reading about firms I was investing in. I realized that I didn’t
understand certain terminology in annual reports. I didn’t understand why
goodwill could change so significantly over a year and so forth. So I had a
marker and shit-loads of annual reports I went through many firms I had an
interest in. Reading - marking - reading - marking - reading, it even became
more important on the toilet…
Whatever I didn’t understand I would write down. Looking it up on books,

everywhere. I was trying to be like a sponge. Soaking up information…
Back at high school, I was about to graduate but I needed a thesis for graduation.
I did it on, how convenient, trading. Technical indicators, fundamental
indicators. I was back-testing all sorts of indicators in Excel. It was fun.
However, I was a duly noted idiot who still had to learn the world, I still didn’t
grasp the bigger picture. I graduated with a flunky degree, I fucked up many
modules except for Maths, Economics and History (I had a genuine interest in
history so I read the entire book for 1 semester in 2 weeks).
Finally I found myself studying in London, doing an mixed

econometric/economics/finance degree. I had 2 finance modules, 2 economics
modules, 2 econometric modules every year, and 2 modules I could pick myself.
I came into a class full of people who followed the; “I want to become an
investment banker and work for Goldman Sachs” dream. It was delusional and
not very motivating. Because of all my pre-studies I’ve done as a hobby, I
absolutely nailed every module. I became bored incredibly quickly. We had
Bloomberg terminals at university and that caused me to spend every free single
minute on such a computer (this includes Sundays). I wrote down every ticker,
what it did, what it could do. All the ins’ and out’s. The funny tickers, how to
track this or that. I wrote it all down. Before the end of the first semester as a first
year BSc, I was asked to be the assistant of a Finance professor for his finance
MBA and MSc classes. Finally some fun.. fuck.. all those guys were very similar
minded: “I want to become an investment banker and work for Goldman Sachs”
Many of the students I worked with, were all crazy about trading. They gave me
all sorts of advice. They told me about all sorts of candle sticks patterns, MACD,
RSI, Aroon indicator, yada-yada…
So a period of testing started. I had friends of mine telling me how ‘awesome’

these indicators were, I had data of the stock market, and the variables which
‘apparently’ predicted the stock market. It wasn’t difficult to start putting back-
testing models together. I quickly realized that all this technical analysis is
complete horse shit and I found dozens’ of ways to debunk every technical
indicator thrown at me. Again, I became disillusioned.
My maths’ teacher was a guy who studied Maths at Cambridge in the 70′s. He
was a old-school ‘you can’t fuck with me’ kind of type. He was the only one who
kept challenging me - and therefore I picked him as my thesis supervisor - how
convenient - a topic about automatic trading with stocks. This time, in contrast
to my high school time, I had much more developed models, I had much more
data, I had a professor kicking my nuts, I didn’t just have technical variables, I
had dozens of macro variables, from precipitation data to gold price,
unemployment to house prices to price of oranges. Plus, I actually automated
my models into live automatic trading models through an API. I did well during
my studies. Not because I studied, but because I enjoyed. I didn’t study to get an
A, I couldn’t give a fuck about grades. I enjoyed understanding the topic, hence
when asked during an examination if I understood in the form of questions, it
wasn’t difficult to get boat loads of A’s every year. I was the only one of my class
who graduated with a first.
I started off my working career in Standard and Poors, looking at credit ratings

and models (I know.. don’t start..). I was curious why certain models of Moody’s,
Fitch or S&P would be so different. What drives this difference? Once again I was
quickly disillusioned. A friend of mine at S&P told me to study Quantitative
Finance as a masters. And so I did - in the continuous search for answers which
started before I finished high school.
Going back to study, I quickly realized how backwards thinking the world of
academia is in comparison to what is ‘practical applications of mathematics in
the financial industry’. I saw what professors had to do to make their articles
‘publishable’. It wasn’t as interesting as I thought it would be, you could qualify
it as having to be ‘politically correct’. During studies we had all this crap about
Markowitz, random models, Euler equations, Brownian motions. All this shit
about risk adjusted performance metrics, the Sharpe ratio was the epitome of
stupidity. It was so out of date. I’ve had a few interviews with proprietary trading
boutiques and hedge funds, and they weren’t able to convince me. I went for a
quant position at a big bank instead. I started working before I graduated, yet
needed a thesis. Again, I realized the conflict between the world of academia
and the world of finance about how to practically apply mathematics in real
world scenarios. It was like water and fire. It fucking sucked horse manure given
my thesis supervisors didn’t see the light on the same topic. One point, at that
bank, I once had lunch with an older gentleman who did equity research. He left
me annual reports of firms he investigated and marked every metric he felt
smelled off and dropped it at my desk. Once again I felt the young boy, and I
enjoyed that much more than trying to do something ‘academically justifiable’.
I’ve worked as a Quant for a while, getting great satisfaction until that ended.
The majority of other QF students all went for investment banking jobs. After
getting fucked up eyes having to deciphered endless lines of codes I felt it was
time for a change. The switch quant to investment banking was extremely easy. I
realized the search for ‘what drives this or that - quantitative analysis’ was still
essential in the i-banking industry, so with a quantitative background I enjoyed
looking at similar processes as I’ve done ever since my last years at high school.
After that I was job-hopping across the world, ending up everywhere, in all sorts
of functions, all quantitative analysis related. All about ‘why does this happen,
what is the driver?’ - ‘does this make sense’ and so forth.
Moral of the story
I am an example of someone who had bat-shit knowledge about maths as a

young kid, yet ending up doing a quantitative career in finance. But questions
like; “how do I break into quantitative analysis” are questions I’ve never asked
myself when I as young. I don’t really know anyone who did either.. You just do -
and progress from there.
My entire path was always about, why the fuck does this happen? And why the
fuck does that happen?
My best learning examples have been peers who were more clever than me (my
math’s professors at university for example) or trading buddies and quants at
work. Books and studies, events and conferences in general were absolutely
fucking useless and tend to be extremely politically correct. Especially

conferences.
So on the question; “can you teach yourself?” Yes!
I still code, I only do MATLAB nowadays and still work in the financial industry.
Upvote 59 Downvote
M. Devlin Alet, works at Trading

Answered Feb 14, 2015
If you just want to get a job, learn C/C++ and work on a bunch of projects that
require low-latency. Maybe go to school, too, if you're not aggressive and
charming enough to land an interview otherwise.
If you want to trade your own account with an algorithm, you need a lot of money
and you need to learn how to trade. Eventually, you should learn Python to
actually do your event-driven backtesting and execution, but that will be
trivially easy in comparison to learning how to trade.
If you do spend some time discretionary trading and still feel you'd like to
deploy an algorithm to encapsulate your trading genius, consult Michael Halls-
Moore's QuantStart.com for some highly structured information.
But really, first things first. If you try to build an algorithm without prior
experience trading, you will have profound regrets.
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Upvote 14 Downvote
Pratik Jain, Solopreneur, Blogger and Stock Market Trader

Answered Jul 26, 2016
In this age of super computers, Algorithmic Trading has gained a huge

popularity from last decade. In the United States, around 70% of total Trading
volumes comes from Algorithmic Trading. In developing nations like India, it
accounts for around 40% of Trading volumes, not a bad number anyways! Retail
traders tend to keep away from Algorithmic Trading considering it complex and
out of reach. However, it’s not true at all. Building an Algorithmic Trading
system can be a simple task if one knows the fundamentals behind it.
1 2
Home Answer Notifications Search Quora Add Question
Check out the below link which would help you to develop your own
Algorithmic Trading System:
Build your own Algorithmic Trading System: Step by Step Tutorial- Part 1 -
Trading Tuitions
Upvote 5 Downvote
Joon Gloria Yoo, Intern at Quantopian

Answered Jan 24, 2015
If you're looking to teach yourself, Quantopian is a really user-friendly platform

to run backtests and live-trade your Python algorithms. Even with little math
and programming background, it's pretty easy to start.
There is a wealth of information to help you build, code, and test on our
platform. We are an active community of 30,000+ users strong who can answer
questions for beginner Python coders/algo traders and a live-chat feature for any
questions you might have. This is a comprehensive webinar series that covers
the basics of the IDE and basic algorithm building.
https://www.quantopian.com/posts... .
Top performing algorithm writers will be invited into the Quantopian Managers
Program and backed with outside capital. Get paid like a top quant hedge fund
manager without actually working for at a hedge fund. Don’t have any money to
trade with? Enter in the Quantopian Open paper trading contest. If you win,
we'll let your algorithm manage $100,000 of our money, and you keep the
profits. Good luck!
Upvote 41 Downvote
Bobby Fatemi, worked at Finance

Updated Apr 1, 2013
Yes it is possible and there are tons of resources to help you.
1. The first step is to learn basic trading strategies. Get familiar with
technical analysis, as most algos use this to make money (I think).
Furthermore, I would spend some time learning hedging strategies, as
well as getting to know how derivatives work.
2. The next step is to brush up on statistics. Statistics is the foundation of

computational finance.
3. After this, learn basic statistical programming tools. R is a widely used

statistical programming language, its free and there is an abundant
supply of finance packages that can help you run trading algos. RStudio
is the interface I use to code with R. There are also packages that let you
connect to your brokerage account (TDAmeritrade, Etrade, etc) and
make trades directly from your R session. This is the hardest part. R
has a very steep learning curve.
4. http://Quantnet.com is where you can network. Its full of smart

dedicated people who are willing to help, and they provide resources
and even a reading list.
5. There are not that many books on this subject as it is a very secretive
field, however, there is a very expensive book called "Genetic
Algorithms and Investment Strategies" by Richard J Bauer, Jr. I havent
read it yet so I cant tell you how it is, but it doesn't look insanely math
heavy. Also, Principles of Financial Engineering by Salih N. Neftci is
popular. Good luck.
Upvote 120 Downvote
Brandon Sim
I don't think most algos use technical analysis to make money.
Ernest Chan, Author of Algorithmic Trading

Answered Apr 2, 2013 · Upvoted by Laeeth Isharc, Former co-head in London at Citadel
fixed income portfolio management
It depends very much on whether you are interested in quant trading for
yourself, or to work for someone else.

If you are trading for yourself, as I argued in my book, you need only very
limited knowledge of advanced math, and in fact not a lot of programming skills
either. I know very successful algo/quant traders equipped with only Excel,
though I do recommend you become proficient in at least Matlab, R, or Python.
It is much easier to succeed by sticking to simple strategies, and bringing a lot of
math to bear won't help.

If you are looking for a quant job, then you do need to become conversant in
more advanced math, ranging from probability and statistics, time series
analysis, to stochastic calculus. On the programming side, at the minimum you
need to be proficient in Matlab/R/Python, if not Java/C#/C++. The specific math
depends on whether you are working in derivatives (more advanced), or equities
asset management (less advanced).

Taking MFE or CQF courses will NOT help you to become a profitable
independent quant trader, but it will help you looking for a job. Independent
traders can look for ideas on blogs, books, magazines, online communities, or
simply downloading academic papers for free. They don't need the complicated
theory-laden courses.
Upvote 263 Downvote
Tom Osborn, former Co - Founder at GreenChar (2013-2016)

Answered May 18, 2017
I would consider taking an online course on algo-trading or something. I found

this online algorithm trading Course on Experfy , this course covers the
underlying principles behind algorithmic trading, covering principles and
analyses of trend-following, carry, value, mean-reversion, relative value and
other more obscure strategies like short-gamma.
What will you get from this course?
Professionals - Understand the mechanics of standard implementations of the

single asset and portfolio based risk-premia trading strategies. Recognize pros
and cons of various approaches to designing strategies and the common pitfalls
encountered by algorithmic traders. Be able to devise new and improved
algorithmic
Algorithmic Traders - Recognize the reasons commonly-used strategies work

and when they don't. Understand the statistical properties of strategies and
discern the mathematically proven from the empirical. Acquire an
understanding of methods to prevent overfitting.
Academics/students - Gain familiarity with the broad area of algorithmic

trading strategies. Master the underlying theory and mechanics behind the
most common strategies. Acquire the understanding of principals and context
necessary for new academic research into the large number of open questions in
the area.
I would recommend looking at it and seeing if it fits what you are looking for.
- See more at: Algorithmic Trading Strategies

Upvote 6 Downvote
Sophia Gold, D. E. Shaw & Co. alum

Answered Sep 10, 2016
Yes, absolutely. I believe almost all people can teach themselves anything, just
most lack the motivation. I just hope you’re not fooling yourself into thinking
you can get a job as a quant through this route, because I’m sorry to say that may
just be off the table at this point in your life no matter what you do. That said:
First, don’t focus on the programming side of things. Most quants work in
Python or sometimes a statistical language and are usually provided with on the
job training since it doesn’t require a language lawyer degree of competence and
is the kind of thing an intelligent person can pick up in a week.
For math, you should just replicate an undergraduate curriculum with a focus in
real analysis and statistics. Start with somewhere like Kahn Academy if that’s
where you’re at and then proceed from there. I’ve found the key to self-study is
making use of online communities to complete exercises and discuss holes in
my understanding. We’re lucky to live in an age where most of the time you can
pick a textbook popular enough to include both video lectures and a wiki/forum
of other autodidacts.
I would also stress specifically not wasting your time studying anything related
to finance. Sure, the latter half of your studies should be focused mainly on
modeling and finance is one choice for that. But it’s really no better (and
certainly less interesting, even in the opinion of the vast majority of quants)
than other options, especially if you’ve picked up anything at all from the
natural or biological sciences along the way. One of the best pieces of career
advice ever given to me came from a person I suspect could be the highest paid
woman in all of finance, and who holds a PhD in computer science herself.
When asked about the increasing prevalence of interdisciplinary degree
programs she responded without missing a beat, “I’ve never met a person in my
life who could program a neural network and couldn’t learn everything there is to
know about finance in a week.”
Upvote 31 Downvote
Joseph Wang, Ex-VP Quant - Investment banking - Hong Kong

Answered Nov 14, 2013
It depends on what you want to do.
If your goal is to have a resume that a hedge fund would find useful, then build
robots (seriously). The type of people that hedge funds look for are people that
are hot-shot C++/Java programmers that want to get into the nitty-gritty details
to shave 10 ms off execution time. You don't get that sort of knowledge doing
finance stuff, you get that sort of knowledge doing EE stuff.
Alternatively, you can do what I did and get a physics Ph.D. A lot of what you
end up doing is self-teaching. I didn't take a class on how to handle legacy code,
they just dumped the code on me and I had to figure out for myself what to do.
Of course the problem with all of this is that it will take you several years to get
good enough to do HFT professionally, and by then no one will care about HFT.
That's one reason not to focus on finance. If you get really, really good at
building robots or simulating black holes, then whatever the hot thing is in ten
years will be good for you.
There are some books on quantitative analysis (Wilmott is good). The trouble is
that the books are wrong. Wilmott for example is an excellent introduction to
quant finance. It is however, mostly wrong. Not that Paul Wilmott is a bad
person, it's just that he doesn't have a crystal ball, and if you write down
anything, then it's going to be obsolete very quickly. Hull is also a great book.
It's also hopelessly out of date. What do you do when the books are wrong? How
do you figure out how to network with? That's where research experience comes
in.
If your goal is to have fun, then just start downloading code and do it.
Fun is important, and it helps if you find something fun that other people find
horrible. For example, right now I'm debugging a legacy JAVA system. I'll likely
spend the next two weeks single stepping through the code finding a race
condition. I find this "fun." Most people don't which means that they aren't
willing to spend years learning how to do this.
Upvote 165 Downvote
Pier de Bruyn, Academic Director for iTrade education program

Answered Mar 27, 2013
Interesting point buddy...
Lots will promote Quant strategies and present unprecedented profits. You have
to know that most of these, I mean 99.9% are just bullshit, meant to sell you
something.
Emmanuel is right, see Black-Scholes model if you want...
This is for advanced traders with short and long term positions, nothing to do
with individual investors or daily traders or scalpers.
Today I received a trading strategy proposition...
I could buy it and include directly into my trading software- so that it deals for
me and make me rich.... ROFL!
As a summary look for Risk/Reward ratio when building/implementing a

trading strategy. In the above example the Profit Objective was 35 pips and Stop
Loss 2 to 3 times the profit target-meaning a 100 pips....
This is just a BIG Joke !!!!
Never, ever follow such a strategy, especially as an individual, there's a good

chance you'll be (mentally) unable to maintain long term loosing positions and
your capital may not be sufficient to satisfy this from your broker point of view.
Your ratio MUST be 1 to 10 in your favor...
Proven not backtested!
Upvote 7 Downvote
Noah Liot, works at Hedge Funds

Answered Mar 28, 2013
You need three big pillars of knowledge that you roughly need to level up to
master level (Read books, but also research papers...) The fields that you need to
deepen are: Markets Finance, Advanced Statistics & Probabilities, Computer
Science Algorithmic (Combinatory and Fuzzy Logic). After you can gain some
insight from Behavioral Finance, Fundamental Finance, Computer Science
Engineering.
With a lot of hard work and perseverance, you might do it on your own, but I
advise either finding a mentor or going back to school. It is not an easy path, but
if a moron like me could do it, you should be able to. But be aware that having
the knowledge and skills is one thing, breaking the entry barriers is another...
Finally, as Emmanuel Marot said in a comment, don't fall in love with your
numbers, it is not a science even if science tools are used.
Cheers and good luck!
Upvote 21 Downvote
Vladimir Novakovski, 8.5 years in hedge funds

Answered Jan 3, 2017 · Upvoted by Alex Song, Traded US Interest Rates, Non-Agency
RMBS, Esoteric ABS at Bain Capital and MS
To do well in quantitative trading, you need to have world-class skills in either

math, computer science, or statistics (ideally, more than one of those). I am
generalizing a bit here — not all aspects of those fields are relevant — but that’s
the basic idea. The interesting thing is that while it is possible to learn these
areas on your own starting from scratch (e.g. using online courses), how you
would fit them together to do quantitative trading well is not something that’s
taught in a public way. The people who are very good at this are in positions
where they would be violating their contracts if they share their best practices.
The most that can be shared are some general ideas on applications of the
fundamentals (see e.g. I want to know everything about high frequency trading
and/or algorithmic trading, where do I start?)
This is why most companies in the space would prefer to hire someone who has
all these ingredients in their background and then teach them how to combine
the ingredients using their well-honed best practices. They would much rather
hire someone who is really good at the fundamental skills and knows nothing
about the markets than someone who is OK at the fundamental skills and knows
a bit about the markets and built some OK strategies.
23.2k Views · View Upvoters · Answer requested by Saqib Ghori
Upvote 124 Downvote
Krim Delko, 20 years taking risk in financial markets, Hedge Fund

Answered May 14, 2015 · Upvoted by Laeeth Isharc, Former co-head in London at Citadel
fixed income portfolio management
I would not look into legacy Quant trading, that is trading based on market data
and exploiting mean reversion opportunities. The match and algorithms there
have been done and the chance for profitable fresh ideas is very low. The game
there is much more technology, infrastructure and capital, i.e get as much
leverage for as low as possible interest rate from street with flexible margin
conditions.
i myself am working on exploiting unstructured data. For example, I am

studying Natural language Processing models and opportunities to do semantic
analysis of news and press releases. That is a much more promising route.
Upvote 12 Downvote
Leonid Altman, trading expert at RealForexRobot.com

Answered Jun 16, 2017
Since 2010 I've been creating automated trading systems using different
platforms and programming languages. Over time, I realized that every time I
start to research some financial instrument and try to create a trading strategy
for it, I come to several price patterns. I tried to generalize all the patterns of
price movement that I know and came to the conclusion that there are not so
many cases of price behavior occurs in the market.
After that, I decided to create a kind of universal tool that allows building a
strategy for any market phase and any financial instrument. A tool that would
save me from the routine work of writing the same code, every time I start
creating a strategy.
As a result, I've created Price Explorer , an easy-to-use but surprisingly

powerful constructor, which allows anyone, who decided to take the path of a
system trader, to start exploring the market and creating profitable trading
strategies without plunging into the jungle of programming languages.
I'm sure you will find it very useful!
Upvote 4 Downvote
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30/03/2018 (2) How can a beginner with little mathematical/no prior trading experience break into quantitative analysis

tive analysis and algorithmic trading?…

Quantiacs High-Frequency Trading Algorithmic Trading +4 Related Questions

Lucas Liew, Quant @ AlgoTrading101.com Does quantitative trading really work?

Evaluation and Optimization of Trading Strategies – Pardo (Great

Trade your way to Financial Freedom – Van K Tharp (Ridiculous-Click

Quantitative Trading – Ernest Chan (Great introduction to algo trading

Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners –

Algorithmic Trading & DMA – Barry Johnson (Shed light on banks’

Beat the Market: A Scientiﬁc Stock Market System - Edward O. Thorp

Quantopian (Code, research, and discuss ideas with the community.

AlgoTrading101 (Disclaimer: I own this site/course. Learn robot

http://asirikuy.com (Learn trading concepts and backtesting theories.

Recommended Blogs/Forums (these includes ﬁnance, trading and algo

Recommended Programming Languages:

If you starting out, I would recommend Quantopian (stocks only), Quantconnect

2. Test and apply your knowledge – Develop your own understanding

3. Meet and partner with others

4. Get a job at a trading ﬁrm and get a mentor

B) Have something to oﬀer. Sometimes, manual traders want to build an algo

Edit: Added a book by Edward O. Thorp.

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Promoted by Quantra by QuantInsti®

Start now at quantra.quantinsti.com

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Your response is private.

Is this answer still relevant and up to date? Yes No

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Learn more at pusher.com

I have a very strong inclination towards understanding portfolio management

After B.Tech, I did not join an IT company (Information Technology) but

I researched more into eﬃcient market hypothesis (basically to understand how

So I started applying at algorithmic trading startups and companies which

Check out these links: should help a beginner

Getting Started with Algorithmic Trading

Pyhton for Trading

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Ross Ledehrman, studied Quantitative Finance

Whatever I didn’t understand I would write down. Looking it up on books,

Finally I found myself studying in London, doing an mixed

So a period of testing started. I had friends of mine telling me how ‘awesome’

I started oﬀ my working career in Standard and Poors, looking at credit ratings

Moral of the story

I am an example of someone who had bat-shit knowledge about maths as a

fucking useless and tend to be extremely politically correct. Especially

So on the question; “can you teach yourself?” Yes!

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M. Devlin Alet, works at Trading

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Pratik Jain, Solopreneur, Blogger and Stock Market Trader

In this age of super computers, Algorithmic Trading has gained a huge

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Joon Gloria Yoo, Intern at Quantopian

If you're looking to teach yourself, Quantopian is a really user-friendly platform

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Bobby Fatemi, worked at Finance

Yes it is possible and there are tons of resources to help you.

2. The next step is to brush up on statistics. Statistics is the foundation of

3. After this, learn basic statistical programming tools. R is a widely used

4. http://Quantnet.com is where you can network. Its full of smart

Upvote 120 Downvote