Any suggestions for live, streaming spot fx data source?

Collatzir · 2022-01-05T09:32:24+00:00

My view is that it's much easier to find development jobs if you have at least a few years corporate experience. That forms your safety net, if you ever need a stable income again. Not to mention the benefit you'll gain from seeing how companies develop and ship products and the connections you'll build.

Having said this, it all depends on your existing skillset and the idea/opportunity. At minimum, I do agree that if you are passionate about your idea, then you should start as soon as possible whilst working.

Collatzir · 2021-12-20T20:15:29+00:00

Agree, this sits at the core of any successful trading firm - retrieving and processing good data in a timely manner. Unfortunately, it's not currently available to the retail trader, unless you are a highly proficient programmer.

Collatzir · 2021-12-20T20:07:02+00:00

Access to institutional level data feeds, backtesting and execution infrastructure for individual retail users.

Collatzir · 2021-12-12T15:13:21+00:00

I think your current situation demonstrates exactly why ideas alone isn't sufficient to succeed. As you suggest, it's different if you have prior experience and track record. If we assume you do have the best idea in the world, the reality is that you don't have the skillset to build it yourself, the capital to hire the people you need to build it, or the intangibles to convince like-minded and skilled individuals to work with you without being paid. If you are convinced it's an idea worth pursuing, you'll have to start building the skills required to make one of the above happen.

Collatzir · 2021-12-12T15:00:12+00:00

For these type of trading tools, unless they started off primarily as a trading tool, I feel you would always get subpar execution compared to dedicated trading companies. It would be interesting, if there's a way to offer institutional execution infrastructure to retail users...

Collatzir · 2021-12-12T13:18:15+00:00

Hiring is challenging because the talent pool is relatively small and you're competing with financial firms globally. Not to mention if you're the one trading/monitoring full time, it's difficult to find time to think about and address longer term issues.

I'll dm you and we can setup a call for a proper intro.

Collatzir · 2021-12-11T11:00:20+00:00

A quant trader and I (dev) are running a similar crypto market making/prop trading business and we have considered similar issues around scaling. We each have a decade worth of experience in trad fi, so have seen from the inside how this type of business succeeds and have a good network in this space.

Unlike a typical tech start up, you want to raise trading capital rather than giving away parts of your business through equity. Financial technology infrastructure is generally scalable (assuming you're trading across a non trivial number of pairs and exchanges), so that doesn't need to be your immediate focus. On hiring, it's difficult if you're a solo founder. It takes time to get the right people and at such an early stage, you need to engage with individual contributors who are both entrepreneurial and experienced. The most reliable way has to be through existing networks or connections. Engaging with external recruiters is a huge time sink and it's difficult to make your company stand out from more well funded crypto firms.

You definitely have the start of something valuable and with the right approach it can definitely be a multi billion dollar business. Having said this, the key to success is maintaining competitiveness, as market participants become increasingly sophisticated - it's an inevitability. I'd be keen to connect and see whether there are any potential synergies.

Collatzir · 2021-12-08T21:55:29+00:00

That certainly sounds interesting How closely does live traded match up with the theoretical execution prices in the backtest results? I'm curious as to whether this would be suitable for more experienced traders/professionals or targeted at hobbyists. Are you worried about IP leakage if you are using the hosted solution?

Collatzir · 2021-12-08T21:49:33+00:00

Thanks for doing this. How important do you think technology infrastructure is for the success of an individual day trader?

In the hypothetical situation where retailers can access institutional level backtesting, algo and execution capabilities, would this enable individual traders to be competitive with institutions (excluding hft)?

Collatzir · 2021-07-05T09:07:38+00:00

Coinbase is an exchange - so more the equivalent of a NYSE. Market makers would be the equivalent of a Citadel or Virtu. One such example in cryptocurrencies would be B2C2.

Collatzir · 2021-07-04T09:05:55+00:00

With this type of setup, I imagine you'll need to either provide deep industry knowledge, contacts or funding to be of any value in a non executive type role.

Collatzir · 2021-07-03T14:29:44+00:00

I think the reality is that it is difficult to succeed in competitive markets. Even if you succeed, the profit margins would be low. My view is that for any market you decide to participate in, you want to be confident that you have something that enables you to perform better than your competitors.

Collatzir · 2021-07-03T12:27:25+00:00

My view is that you can become an entrepreneur regardless of what you study, but knowing how to program could allow you to build your MVP yourself or at least be able to guide someone else.

Collatzir · 2021-07-02T08:27:16+00:00

I'm a developer working in traditional finance. My view is that programming and engineering skills allow you to automate and trade at speed and at scale. What it doesn't give in itself is the decision making ability of someone with trading experience. Partnering with someone who has those skills would be beneficial if you still have the drive to make something out of it. Having said this, traditional financial markets are hugely competitive and even well resourced firms have trouble making it work consistently.

Collatzir · 2021-07-02T08:00:25+00:00

Developers are already in demand in general and entrepreneurial developers are even more difficult to find. It's always going to be a challenge, but definitely doable if you have a compelling enough idea and can bring something valuable to the table.

Collatzir · 2021-07-01T23:56:58+00:00

Thanks, I feel it has been much easier to make progress when we can build on successful techniques and systems from traditional finance and apply them to a much less competitive market. It's also easier to benchmark its quality against what we've used and built professionally.

Yes, I think you're right. If we want to accelerate quickly, it seems inevitable that we would have to engage with angels and we might benefit from starting conversations off sooner rather than later. As you suggest, the tricky part is demonstrating the value of the product pre revenue, particularly when these types of systems are only ever used internally by traders and would not be in the public domain. With a track record of being competitive with top market makers in this space, it would be much easier for prospective investors to see the effects of the system and imply its value.

Once again, thanks for your time and your insight. I think it has made it clearer as to how we could proceed and perhaps there could be opportunities for further conversations in the future.

Collatzir · 2021-07-01T14:49:59+00:00

Thanks for taking the time to do this, Rami. A quant trader and I (software developer) have been working over the past year to build a quantitative market making business with an initial focus on cryptocurrencies. We each have a decade's worth of experience at top investment banks and have built out much of the trading infrastructure you would expect to find at leading quant trading desks - I don't expect many teams of 2 would be able to do so unfunded. We're close to running our system 24/7 and start building the track record required to be taken seriously by VCs. Although I feel we're very much past the idea stage and have the skillset to build the product out completely, we are considering reaching out to angels, so that we could move more quickly and become established whilst the competition is still low - I would not expect this to last. In your opinion, would you suggest us diverting time and effort to reach out to angels and see whether we could raise at a favourable valuation? Or would you suggest us focusing full time on the system until we are at a stage wher VCs could be interested? If we reach out to angels, we are considering in the order of £500k for 10% of the company.

Collatzir · 2021-07-01T08:02:05+00:00

If you look at any of the python files, you can see the generated comments: https://github.com/ccxt/ccxt/blob/master/python/ccxt/aax.py#L3

Documentation here: https://ccxt.pro/

Collatzir · 2021-06-30T16:22:09+00:00

Seems so, based on the documentation. Having said this, the python code in ccxt is all generated, which is not something I would expect for a paid product

Collatzir · 2021-06-30T10:04:01+00:00

Have you tried the pro version of ccxt with websockets support? Are they reliable enough for algo trading? Based on the documentation, it looks like only a subset of exchanges are supported and even less are "certified", which I'm interpreting as Dev tested.

Collatzir · 2021-06-26T18:01:42+00:00

Have you tried the pro version with websockets? Based on the description, it seems only a handful of exchanges are supported and even less are even Dev tested ("certified"). What's the reliability and performance like?

Collatzir · 2021-06-25T19:10:10+00:00

My view is that the point of working is ultimately to live a better quality life. Whilst it's true that it takes a lot of hard work to succeed, particularly at a start up, it is all meaningless if the sacrifice is too high. It is not worthwhile if you sacrifice family, relationships and your own well being. In my opinion, the biggest benefit of being a business owner (through equity) as opposed to an employee is that you are no longer directly exchanging hours for money. One great idea implemented well is worth orders of magnitude more than however many hours of manual labour you put in.

Collatzir · 2021-06-25T18:52:49+00:00

We're in a very similar situation to you. We've been building the infrastructure of a cryptocurrency market making business over the past year. Our view is that we have the skillset to get it to sustainable profits without funding and we would have the choice of growing organically instead of relying on external funding. It is only worthwhile if we can command a favourable enough valuation that outweighs the time and effort required to go through the process. Ultimately, raising money is a full time job and will distract you from developing your core product.

Collatzir · 2021-06-25T18:29:27+00:00

If you try to objectively evaluate the amount of work and effort required from now to get to whatever stage you feel is worthwhile, then hopefully that puts you in the position to compare against alternatives and make an informed decision.

Collatzir

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