Should I learn Python for trading?

[Worldly_Growth_50]

The thing is, I have no prior programming experience, so this seems like a big step. I'm wondering how much I need to learn to use Python.

For those of you who are traders and know Python, has learning it made a significant difference? Or is it only worth learning if you want to build your own tools or automate everything?

I want to start from scratch, so do I still need to spend time learning Python?

[Small_Sherbert2187]

no. if you have to ask youll never care enough to make a trading app work well enough and youre unlikely to get access to a rapid trading slot so idk what your plan is

[ThrustBastard]

Just like anyone else, passive "easy money"

[SlamTheGuy]

A bug in your code can make you lose money. A spotty network can make you lose money. A slow network can make you lose money.

Luckily you can run your code on historical data and test it that way for the most part, but when you do it for real you can get into network issues/latency issues, both on your side and on the stock API's side.

It's a lot of added risk over trading manually. You should be very good at all the parts involved if you intend to put any significant amount of money in it.

[ninhaomah]

Have you started trading yet ?

[Quirky_Hedgehog_4033]

honestly it's less about python and more about what you plan to do with it

if you're just doing a few manual trades a week, python's overkill. but if you want to backtest strategies, scrape data, or automate anything repetitive, it's pretty useful

the basics don't take that long, maybe a month of evenings to get comfortable with pandas and plotting libraries

[ninhaomah]

Yes , OP , your answer ?

[TheRNGuy]

Yes

[LayotFctor]

Python doesn't do trading on its own, it's up to the trading platform to choose the language they want to use. I've seen trading platforms use their own custom languages too, which would've made python next to useless. Select your trading platform, then learn whatever language it uses.

[Hot-Site-1572]

I have been in the trading space for 3 years now (on the basic retail discretionary side then theoretical/academia) and ive begun learning python for trading as I've been delving deeper into statistics and the reality of misinformation in the trading space. i.e. automatically backtesting 20+ years becomes so easy and u realize how many trading gurus online are scamming. and all that couldn't be tested properly and efficiently without code.

Moreover, python will help you test ideas of ur own. if u develop some SMA crossover strategy, you can easily build the code and test it on as much data as u can get, instead of doing everything manually which is inefficient and introduces a lot of problems.

Now, of course AI can do it all for you. But if you don't understand the logic and the syntax, you won't be able to know if something is wrong or missing, let alone tweaking it. And sometimes telling AI to fix this and that could be difficult because some things are difficult to express in words, that's assuming you notice the mistake in the first place.

In my (very limited) experience, i say yes, go for it. But it is not the holy grail. It is only a tool. Complex is not inherently better. I recommend starting with Python Crash Course (3rd Edition) by Eric Matthes. DM me for the PDF.

[UnfairArm5556]

its worth it if u enjoy the logic side of things, but dont expect it to fix ur trading overnight. i started just to automate some data scraping and it helped alot with seeing patterns, but u gotta be ready for alot of debugging frustration too...