The Birth of a Quant Trader

I would also like to recomment this book, it's really one of my favourite basic books and goes through many basic concepts quite well and it's quite well written

(the author is the founder of Trading Blox and one of the original turtles).

Medici, Mikkom.

Thanks for your comments and recomendations.

Hi Pipalicious!

After some people here said that it may be very difficult and take years to do what you intend to, I would like to share my points of view concerning becoming a quant trader.

First of all, you do not need the programming skills of a professional programmer like someone said. Neither do you need the knowledge of a PhD in mathematics. Nowhere close to that. You need some time to learn a programming language suitable for trading. Try MultiCharts. It is very easy to learn and its the best product for analyisis of trading systems I could find. Do not try to learn something like C# or Java in the beginning, that is a lot more difficult.

To take some first steps with MultiCharts, you should not take longer than a few weeks.

Do not buy any trading systems which are expensive (> 200 EUR). They are not worth the money.

Do not buy any trading systems which are a black box (i.e. no open code). They do not work and when the code is hidden you can not see why.

Look for free trading systems as a start. To see what might work look at trading systems which have won contests. At the dukascopy JTrader contest, you can even see the code of the system and let it run for yourself (ok that is Java, but you do not need to write new code). The MetaTrader championship also is a good place to stop by. They do not disclose the code there, but you can have a look at the trades to get an idea of the strategy.

To learn the basics of system trading, read some good book. medici's recommendation of Thomas Stridsman is a good one to start with. There are also lots of other good books, like http://www.amazon.com/New-Trading-Sy...d_bxgy_b_img_b.

You should also know that martingale strategies do not work.
They have never worked and will never work.
It is surprising, how many people - especially beginners - fall in love with that crap. Here in FF are surprisingly lots of very active threads promoting this way to go bust, so be warned. The reason for this is that it is easy to write a martingale EA which SEEMS to work because the backtesting was done wrong. In reality it does not work. While it is easy to write a crappy martingale EA which seems to work, it is a lot harder to write an EA which really works.

So how long does it take to become a quant trader?
It really depends on you, but it does not need to be long.

After reading trading literature and writing trading systems part time for years, it only took me two weeks to start a new career as a quant trader. I found a trading idea in a winning strategy of a contest and then wrote my own program to do something similar. This took me two days. Then I traded my strategy in demo for a week. The next week, I went live. That was all. Everybody can do this. Perhaps it is not as easy as it may seem when I write this. But it is not too difficult either.

I wish you good success with your plans!

Regards,
TraderJF

Cheers mate I totally agree with you and for some reason people seem to not quite grasp my focus with all this... You and a few others do.

I think a lot here believe im a complete newb yet they dont realize that I have been trading for over 2 years with s/r, candle formations and pretty much 'naked'. Granted im a rookie and not completely consistent.

The fact that I want to take MY interest on trading to 'another level' is the whole purpose of this thread.

Yeah ive been recommended this book aswell. Cheers mate

On a sidenote, im very weary what I read because a lot of stuff is just pure fluff with pretty pictures. But both these books Ive been recommended. Multiple times.

Totally agree. Thanks for your interest in this thread.

Its the same with LUCK (Learning Under Correct Knowledge).

With a lot of "luck" one can achieve what they want

Cheers.

Pipalicious, how's your quant research going?

I just read this whole thread - why, I'm not really sure

One of the items being overlooked here is that the point is not just to be a quant, the point is to be a good quant. I think that when you look at it from tat perspective, its an even longer road than you realize. If the end goal is the same (make money, duh!), then you'd probably be better off (ie more effective) by joining James16 or doing something else like that.

any findings of being a Quant trader? anyone???

Do you need to have a PhD to become a profitable quant? maybe....
Do you need a degree in mathematics to be a profitable quant trader? maybe....
Do you need to have an engineering degree to be a great programmer? maybe....

For me, the answer to those questions do not matter nor I don't care of what the experts say.
The only thing that matters is whether my trade algorithm / program brings in additional profit into my bank account.

At the end of the day, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.