Understanding applied mathematics and statistics is also very helpful. Contrary to the general stereotype that algorithmic trading is exclusively for geeks, it turns out that people are needed to succeed. When we launched a new product, there was a day when it went up one-on-one.
Over 40 people in sales, trading, technology, compliance, market risk, marketing, legal, quantitative research, products and more.
Algorithmic trading is the best area to work. Of course, this opens up many paths for personal career advancement. In fact, it was not uncommon to reach MD before his 35th birthday. In many respects, working with algorithmic trading is a condensed version of the engineering and organizational challenges facing the wider economy, the real world in terms of engineering, mathematics, and business processes, except for breathtaking ones.
Turned out to be a microcosm of the problems we face every day. Algorithmic trading is a really exciting and rewarding job. In short, like many startup founders, I really liked my job, but I just found something more interesting.
If you want to do a technical job, and want to allow your job to have a direct global impact, you have to work for a large tech company or start yourself! I learned that I am mainly focusing on building parallel systems. Is one of the most complex aspects of software engineering.
Looking at these issues, we began to see patterns and methods that could generalize the solutions applied. Personally, I'd often enter a Zen-like state when I was trying to model and code. What really helped in that situation was using so called high level programming languages such as Python. The code is also more directed to solving business problems as opposed to technical problems, which means it's easier for a person who doesn't focus exclusively on coding in say market risk or compliance, to understand what some code is doing.
I learned very early on in my algorithmic trading career that it's best to make the job of people in market risk and compliance easy. For this reason Concurnas has been engineered to be an easy to program language, just like Python - but better. Python is a great language, but it can be slow. In addition to its incredible performance, Java in particular has a wealth of open source software available for it which anyone can use for free.
Concurnas runs on Java - this way it offers the incredible performance of Java and use of all the existing free Java based software that's available. Concurnas also offers support for the 'domain specific languages' DSLs which inevitably get built into trading systems as developers invent their own nomenclature for describing a trading problem.
This is unusual - few programming languages offer any DSL support. Lastly, Concurnas is open source. I'm often asked why I give it away for free and the reason is that, throughout my career I, and the companies I've worked for, have benefited from open source software, in fact much of the world's software relies upon open source, and so it was my way of giving back. Contact: sbutcher efinancialcareers.
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Click here to manage your subscriptions. The reason for this I think is that for most traders it's pretty much all about the money, and whenever anything is all or mostly about the money, it ends up having no soul. This reality turns out to be kind of depressing if you reflect on it for too long and I guess that's probably why most traders aren't all that self-reflective.
That said, I'm not so sure this applies to algorithmic traders because from the few I've met they tend to love the technical challenge as much or more that the pursuit of fortune which is not unlike technical startup founders. The algorithmic trading world is so secretive that you rarely get to meet anyone else doing it, much less have the opportunity to discuss techniques, algorithms or experiences.
As a result, there's little to no community to engage with, and in case you haven't already discovered this truth, being part of a community is a big part of what makes life fun. Disclaimer: If I ever make a personal fortune from web startups, there's still a part of me that would like to give algorithmic trading one last try.
There, I said it. Real conclusion in less words : One should not expect a poet to excel in mathematical areas, in fact one should expect the poet to fail in applied math and therefore no surprises there. The team and its successors operated successfully from through the beginning of the 21st century. Many other blackjack teams have been formed around the world with the goal of beating the casinos. They beat vegas. No algor needed. Anyone figured out what this guy tried to do?
Sorry to hear that! The problem as I see it is that you worked virtually alone without anybody to participate in your level of theoretical discussions. Yes, I agree, the hard core traders are the wrong crowd, I do not enjoy them either. However, I have gone the other route: over the past 12 years I have built a team of very talented an exceptionally bright scientists that made the search for the "ultimate weapon" a fun and a very rewarding exercise.
Also, I have not limited myself just to trading; I did everything I could to preserve the spirit of a philosophical journey trying to apply my results to about everything that moves. Utilizing my findings in diffident environments helped me to fight the inescapable frustration of occasional trading failures. As a result, after 18 years I still love it!
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