Disclaimer
I will have to put disclaimer first in this post.
First of all, I will put links to my posts throughout this guide. Please do read them. I’m not gonna repeat what I have wrote there. What I wrote in this blog are all based of my opinions. There is no scientific data behind them. That means you might disagree with my opinions, and it’s fine. There are plenty of people out there who shares their opinions about trading as well. Maybe any of them would suits your trading style better.
As I have said here, 10% per year is a good realistic target. So if you want to make big profit, be prepared to put big amount of starting money on it. This guide won’t promise you that you can make big profit from small starting money. If you are looking for such guide, this guide isn’t for you.
Please also read “Fooled by randomness” book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The book will go in-depth on how random trading is with a lot of examples, which I won’t copy here. My trading principle is similar to them, which is I believe that trading can’t really being put into codes, as I try to illustrate here. We can try to do so, but please always remember that failure is always an option.
If you think you can have profitable bot after few days/weeks, then you are at the wrong place. At the time of writing, I have been working at this for 4,5 years, created hundreds of strategies. I only be able to have 1 strategy that can work long-term (so far), and that was after 2 years. So if you can’t afford that amount of time and effort, personally I would suggest you to try to find any other hobby.
For me, algo trading means the bot must run 24/7 uninterrupted with no manual intervention and not-so-frequent updates of the strategy. If you need to update the strategy hourly for example, you aren’t doing algo trading.
Also when I’m talking about “long-term”, I mean at least one year run. Few days/weeks/months run are nothing, because sometimes a specific type of market can stay around for few weeks/months before another condition come and replace it, which might break your strategy.
Last, this post will be updated regularly when needed. So do check the post regularly if you want to.
Now let’s get on to the guide.
Public strategies are for learning purpose only
No, this isn’t some template warning/disclaimer. All public strategies won’t work in long-term. They might be profitable in specific market conditions, but it won’t survive in long-term. Why? You can read the explanation here. Don’t trust anyone that offers you a strategy, paid or not. Do take them if they are free, but treat them as learning material, not for live run.
There are plenty of free strategies out there. I’m not gonna specifically recommend any of them. Do read them, see what each of them trying to do, test it on dry run mode. Don’t forget to check for lookahead and recursive bias on them.
There is no best indicator(s)
One of most asked question of new users is about the best indicator(s). There is none. I explained it more here. More important part is to know your “enemy” (which is the coins you gonna trade) instead.
Algo trading isn’t about how smart you are
If you have read the book and my posts linked in this guide, all of those tells same story, trading is never a scientific activity. The journey will be rough and long. Never allow failure makes you feels like an idiot. I have seen smarter people than me get out of algo trading. 99% of the time, real life job will be more profitable than algo trading. Personally, I treat this as a hobby. That makes me less impacted by losses.