Last month, I started trading. It has been a fun and engaging experience so far. I went from 5% to 15% in two days and down to -5% in less than two weeks. It really teaches me about the market and also about myself.
I am trading US stocks with IKBR, and it is extremely challenging due to the time difference. Sydney is now 16 hours ahead of New York. That means that the market starts at 1:30 AM. There is absolutely no way I can trade at that time. When I am awake, the market is already closed for the day. In case of sudden drops, I cannot do much but see red numbers when I wake up.
I have been playing around with options as well, and I only had one big success with AAPL. To be honest, that was nothing but a miracle because the value decays over time and will eventually reach zero. In order to profit, the stock price has to change drastically within a short period of time.
That’s why I came out with this idea of automated trading.
I have been experimenting with automated tasks using my mini desktop since last year, and it has been working quite well. Next up, I want to write a trading bot. As a programmer, this is probably the best way to trade.
The bot is separated into a few parts. The first part is data analysis with historical stock data. This is the crucial part because it will pick stocks to trade in the upcoming weeks. A better stock picker will result in higher profits.
The second part is buying and selling. Since the future is uncertain, picking a good time to buy or sell is rather important. I don’t have a strategy yet, but I will keep experimenting with different techniques.
My current code base is quite messy, so I will spend some time improving the entire project first. There are a few issues with my implementation. However, I have figured out ways to solve them with my past experience.
Overall, the bot doesn’t need to be perfect. If it can generate a consistent profit more than my apps every year, then it is a success. I will keep updating my progress, and this will be a long project.