My Journey into Quant Research & Trading

The concept of trading has always fascinated me, but I lacked the resources to explore further into this deep ocean. Fortunately, I kicked off my software engineering career and it was during this time that I got to properly understand the basics of trading, especially forex trading.

Trading is a worldwide phenomenon that affects every facet of our economy, and with respect to financial trading in the markets, it plays a fundamental role in ensuring the exchange of value between individuals and companies. Sadly, the probability of extracting consistent profits is really low and with the lack of knowledge on market fundamentals or technical analysis, it becomes near impossible to trade and get consistent profits. This was my initial journey into forex and with the lack of knowledge, I made few wins, multiple losses and ended up blowing accounts unnecessarily.

However, I moved into binary options trading and saw serious potential there. This was partly because I had a “mentor” on youtube to guide me on option strategies and analyze the market technically before placing a CALL or a PUT. At the time, I used the IQOption broker for trades but still failed at making consistent profits. I really wondered what mistakes I kept on making, and watching his tutorial videos gave me insights into what I probably did wrong but looking back now, I was naive.

Honestly, trading is draining, and doing it as a discretionary trader (manually) makes it unbearable; at least it did for me. I cannot handle staring into the charts for hours on end, looking for a signal that would beat the market. Forex is tough but gives you an edge due to the risk/reward ratio offered. However, Binary Options is a terrible way to consistently stay profitable because by default, you are on the losing edge. Imagine a strategy that involves you losing all your initial investment but when you win, the return is not up to 100% of that investment; correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand there are forex strategies which involve higher risks with lower rewards but I’m certain they are rare. I needed an alternative, and there came the option of automatically placing orders in the market without having to sit behind the computer screen.

Welcome to Algo Trading! I thought to myself, I knew how to write code, so this would be a breeze for me implementing. The roadblock was immediate for me; at the time I was familiar with Python, Golang and Javascript so learning another language would be easy. Unfortunately, I did not attempt learning the language and instead tried building a backtesting system myself using python and go, which in retrospect was a terrible idea as a beginner. I built the mangled system, but I was burnt out using such system because I had deviated from my goal of testing against the market using available tools to building a tool from scratch.

Due to the frustrations encountered, I abandoned the project, and stopped trading for at least 7 months. I went back to watching binary option tutorials and doing nothing about the value I gained from these mini lectures. I needed the time to recharge, reset, and strategize. Unfortunately, I had too many responsibilities and a booming career which I had to focus on. When I summoned the courage to pick myself back up, I chose to properly educate myself on the concept of algo trading, and this led to me discovering the world of quant research and trading. Also, I picked up C++ to enable me work with backtesting systems requiring such language. I have been off and on for the past few years, and honestly I know that is not the best strategy for bringing about consistent change, but over the past 1 year, I have been making efforts towards building a reliable trading system using the concepts learned from algo trading books and resources.

In retrospect, I’ve experienced good times and bad times, but I am glad that it never deterred me from pushing forward; it’s going to stay that way. My new approach also involves a mix of vector based backtesting / research using python, and implementation as a robot on a trading terminal.

I wish you the best on your trading journey, and I’m available if you have any questions regarding algo or quant trading.

Thank you, and stay tuned for more content coming your way 😊😊😊😊 !!!