Comments on: Quants-R-Us? https://www.isegoria.net/2013/10/quants-r-us/ From the ancient Greek for equality in freedom of speech; an eclectic mix of thoughts, large and small Thu, 28 May 2026 20:49:01 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 By: Rockatansky https://www.isegoria.net/2013/10/quants-r-us/comment-page-1/#comment-981860 Rockatansky Fri, 04 Oct 2013 14:02:59 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=32943#comment-981860 Anomaly UK,

That is perfectly true, what you’re saying, but it’s important to realize the level of dominance the algos have over the markets. Even if your strategy has a timeframe estimated to be hours, low frequency — you’re not duking it out with sub-millisecond crowd — they still have ways of getting to you. For one, your offsetting order, if it’s a winner, is much harder to get a fill on than it used to be. Prints of a certain price are put out without much corresponding volume. (It trades, say, 52.45 but not enough for you to get yours).

Also, most automated programs have stop-loss orders placed after every opening trade. These are the bread and butter of HFT programs. They can run the market up or down to your price, trigger your stop, and run it back the other way in less than a second. You won’t know what hit you. Is it illegal? Probably, kind of, sort of. Does it matter? Apparently not or not for some.

]]> By: Anomaly UK https://www.isegoria.net/2013/10/quants-r-us/comment-page-1/#comment-981053 Anomaly UK Fri, 04 Oct 2013 05:41:11 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=32943#comment-981053 Algorithmic trading is much broader than HFT, which gets all the press. Plenty of algorithmic funds trade at daily or lower frequencies.

(Not that that makes DIY algo trading a good idea. This is not investment advice, etc.)

]]> By: Scipio Americanus https://www.isegoria.net/2013/10/quants-r-us/comment-page-1/#comment-980000 Scipio Americanus Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:46:10 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=32943#comment-980000 When the big firms are building supercomputers and digging trenches to get their algorithms access to data literal nanoseconds before the competition, and spending millions of dollars for those few nanoseconds, there doesn’t seem to be a way for the home investor to credibly compete.

]]> By: Rockatansky https://www.isegoria.net/2013/10/quants-r-us/comment-page-1/#comment-979853 Rockatansky Thu, 03 Oct 2013 17:13:13 +0000 http://www.isegoria.net/?p=32943#comment-979853 Bad idea. Modular, user friendly computer trading programs have been around for awhile. They are not the real thing and, even if they were, your hardware and connection speed cannot compete with getco, et al. You’ll get hurt.

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