Coding on the Road
My Crash Course in Algorithmic Trading
I’m new.
I’m new to Alpaca. I’m new to Python. I’m new to coding.
But I’m not new to personal finance. I’m Tyler — nice to meet you.
I want to talk a little about why I’m here — why exactly I’m in the position of being so new and why that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I had worked for five years in a high tech semiconductor company. I was flying everywhere, meeting with cool companies, and visiting factories that I would have never imagined seeing. Despite some issues, I generally had a cool job — but my favorite thing about it was getting paid.
Something about the way many modern Americans operate financially never sat well with me. Credit scores, unnecessary purchases made on debt, money spent on lawnmowers, first class tickets, pick up trucks; many things which serve to only depreciate and reduce someone’s financial independence. From day one of my professional life I made it a goal to avoid that situation, and I saved quite a bit of everything I earned. I did that for five years — and at the start of the second year I began investing.
At first, I was trying to invest the ‘old’ way. I was looking into financial advisers, IRAs, and it basically seemed like no matter what I needed external help. Eventually, I gained the confidence, or lost my patience, and decided to go independent. I ventured into Betterment and consistently let that grow. Then I got bored and started trading random stocks with Fidelity. A few years, and a few financial haircuts later, Robinhood came out — and that was able to take my discretionary investing to the next level. In short — despite some initial growing pains, my portfolio was successful, and I credit much of that success to the ease of access provided by the new wave of financial tools and resources. Earlier this year I noticed something. My job got boring. Then I noticed something else, I could afford to leave. So I did. Then I traveled, and I still am doing that today.
The shift from being an employee to being self-sustained is immense, and the responsibility got a lot heavier. Discretionary trading is hit or miss, it can have big wins but carries a heavy risk of loss if your gut is off one day. I knew I needed to develop a more secure, reliable, and adaptable system to continue to maintain a long-term healthy portfolio. I went through multiple Excel models, mental strategies, and quite a few ‘OK no excuses sell at $6’ in order to achieve this. Then I found Alpaca. I wouldn’t have had the success I’ve enjoyed if I stayed with the old methods of personal finance. Betterment and Robinhood were there when I needed them. This time, Alpaca has descended at the perfect time, presenting a user-friendly platform for Algorithmic trading. It’s the next step in the evolution of the democratization of investing. I can smell new, and Alpaca is new.
There’s only one issue: I don’t code. Or rather, I don’t know how to code. Over the course of the next three months I’ll be staying at a Muay Thai training camp in Thailand, and I’ve made it my goal to use that time to adopt Alpaca as a trusted platform in my financial arsenal. I’ve seen how equities move, and I know how to make trades, but I need to automate them in a way that’s defensive, reliable, and removed from my emotions. So that’s what I will be doing. I’ve enrolled in the online Applied Data Science course from Columbia University as well as the Oxford Algorithmic Trading Program and so far they have been decent introductions, but at the end of the day, crash coursing myself into this field is going to require some long nights and some major mental overtime; but that’s exactly what makes this so exciting, I haven’t felt like this since I first started investing. I’m pumped, and it will be fun to try my best at getting this system working and I’m looking forward to seeing what else Alpaca has to offer as it continues rolling out new features.
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(This is 12/11 post for Trading API Advent Calendar 2018)
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