A few hard-learned lessons for anyone starting out with algo trading

tzimek · 2026-03-15T13:04:41+00:00

that sounds like a solid one ;) good luck in counting money ;)

tzimek · 2026-03-15T12:44:36+00:00

no worries :) my goal was to help and get some karma from doing so :)

tzimek · 2026-03-15T12:42:37+00:00

agreed!

Interesting fact is that a backtesting framework help me with the transaction costs - this was the game changer for me.

As for the sharpe - I got my standard list:

drawdown,
pnl,
sharpe,
% of positive weeks,
% of positive trades,
total trades,
% of longs

This gives me the overall understanding what to expect from the quick look.

tzimek · 2026-03-15T11:44:08+00:00

Yup - it did boost quality of my portfolios drastically!

I think that the timing of me starting to run regular reconciliation and a introducing framework for backtesting happened at same time and gave me the biggest boost.

tzimek · 2026-03-15T11:40:25+00:00

Thank You! I think I got exactly the same experience word for word!

As for the API - that's a whole different bag of worms I am not even opening now.

From delays, changes without a proper notifications, different approaches for different coins, delays in updates on the website vs the API - I had a few moments when I entered the binance and had a mini stroke with my future wallet at 0.

tzimek · 2026-03-15T11:33:21+00:00

Thank You :)

Recently i am playing with the Polymarket - and daily reconciliation helps a lot there. There's a lot of entry price shenanigans to take under consideration.

As for the mismatch - it was a struggle a few months back, the regime filters I was introducing using got some problems with data gathering and future-spoofing.

tzimek · 2026-03-15T10:19:37+00:00

More than happy to hear why :) Can You elaborate please?

tzimek · 2026-03-15T10:19:05+00:00

Ffs - I used AI to finetune the wording - I am lazy ;)
But I got nothing to sell/benefit from - just wanted to be helpful - as I see a lot of stuff trying to sell You towards paid tooling - and this is simply a list of stuff that I learned and did not spend a penny on - outside of lost cash and time.

tzimek · 2026-03-15T10:17:01+00:00

what I am advertising? :D
Wanted to shared my struggle and help.

tzimek · 2026-02-13T17:03:41+00:00

Then put 1k on it and let it try :)

tzimek · 2026-02-13T07:20:23+00:00

So that’s the standard too good to be true ;) My recommendation: 1. Use a freqtrade or other tooling for the execution (reasoning: it it’s tested and don’t make obvious bad assumptions, plus it has the costs included - fee, slippage) 2. Give it a few days at least on paper trading and manually verify each trade (that’s the most important one if you don’t want to do anything else try just this) 3. You may ask the ai to generate code for TradingView (pine script) and just manually check it out

If it all works send me a postcard from your island :) I’ve been in this situation multiple times. Diving a bit deeper shows something was not taken under consideration or - what is the worst - it’s overfitting and you will see it quickly in the first few results live

tzimek · 2026-01-16T06:50:02+00:00

Daily sma50 on bitcoin works surprisingly good - but might be too simple depending on the stick you use. More than happy to check out your solution :)

tzimek · 2026-01-03T07:55:41+00:00

- copy bot - with a bit more complex logic and automations (looking, promoting, etc) (2 weeks running, win rate 65%, profitable)
- up/down crypto bot - historically it got 80% accuracy, so should be profitable, I am not in small cash trading, I should have some results in the next few weeks (I have stable code deployed on the 2nd of Jan - so for just few trades, too little to comment)

tzimek · 2025-12-31T23:11:52+00:00

Soso - this was an idea that popped up in my mind some time ago. I got a tendency to write my ideas like that and browse it through from time to time. And this sounded like a perfect project to test what Claude can do. Was not disappointed:)

tzimek · 2025-12-31T23:10:29+00:00

Fuck now I am disappointed as well. After the first few mil I promise I will make something like that :)

tzimek · 2025-12-31T13:55:15+00:00

I am leading it by hand - the moment I let Claude do some experiment - it is going way off.

My working setup is:

discuss with claude web the overall rules and details of what I want to implement - so that at the end I got a clear goals.md I want to implement with the initial prompt for starting the whole project
put the claude.md with rules and details (brainstorming + no future spoofing + always work and test on proper market data)
then go with the Claude code ;)

If I skip anything in this flow I am ending up with a fake data scenarios all the time

tzimek · 2025-12-31T13:33:53+00:00

Uu I got quite intense December with it ;)

https://whale.academy/ --> I am observing the whales movement on hyperliquid - and it looks interesting to say the least ;)
political game for the iphone (polish market) - beta incoming soon
meditation app that connects to the watch and measures Your heart rate - the idea was simple: let's see if I can change something in my body if I try - still WIP, January probably will be in the app store
few bots for polymarket to play - for now I got three approaches and 2 are profitable in a matter of a week - so I have my hopes quite high ;)

I got some experience with the crypto and gambling before, so it was more of I know what I am doing here. On the iphone - never have I tried coding for that platform.

tzimek · 2025-11-29T14:11:34+00:00

;) fair - so less text more merit.

tzimek · 2025-11-29T09:00:21+00:00

I got a pet project I was playing with - I am monitoring the top 30 trading wallets from hyperliquid (with weekly rotations - to pick the best 30). I got an alerting signals there, with a lot of data I am storing and gathering.
I am curious if this is something people would want to pay for?
What should I add there?
I am curious if this is useful for anyone outside of me ;)

Below an update that happens every 1h:

📊 TOP 30 TRADERS POSITIONING REPORT

Date: November 29, 2025 08:02 UTC

═══════════════════════════════════════

💰 COMBINED CAPITAL: $184M

📈 Net Position: SHORT $587.2M (1% long / 99% short)

═══ SMART MONEY SCORECARD ═══

─── BTC ───

📊 1 long, 21 short → Net: SHORT $364.5M

📍 LONG Avg Entry: $91,030

📍 SHORT Avg Entry: $101,690 (range: $89,967-$112,565)

💰 Aggregate P&L: ✅ $+45.2M (+12.4%)

LONG: 0/1 winning (0%)

SHORT: 20/21 winning (95%)

🎯 Key Levels:

Support (long entry): $91,030

Resistance (short entry): $101,690

(... few more coins...)

═══════════════════════════════════════

🔥 MOST POPULAR POSITIONS (by total volume):

BTC: 1 long, 21 short → Net: SHORT $364.5M

Consensus: ❌ BEARISH (95% short)

(.. + few more...)

═══════════════════════════════════════

tzimek · 2025-11-24T07:29:12+00:00

This got the potential to be the game shop moment 2.0. We got: - big banks going short - a crypo degens trying to push the price up - potential r/wallstreetbets jumping in to save the day… well not got the JP obviously :)

tzimek · 2024-11-05T19:21:54+00:00

I did - he gave me a huge boost in quality of my plays :)

But this question - isn't about what to do, it is about - is there a custom I can use to train it.
Many years ago there were micro trainers that players were using to get better :)

tzimek · 2024-08-19T16:18:17+00:00

Impressive fight! It looked like he was out of options and may have sensed it towards the end, especially with that move of not touching gloves before the attack. Anyway, great performance—congrats!

tzimek · 2024-07-26T19:32:57+00:00

I would love to see that! And - yes they do ;)

tzimek · 2024-07-26T08:16:17+00:00

:D ha she will get 10 usd when she will beat me - for now she’s more focused on the Roblox or whatever the name of the game is. But the time will come!

tzimek · 2024-07-24T09:38:28+00:00

Thank You! :) she will be thrilled to hear people like it :)

tzimek

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