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Comment by _wgnp | Hacker News Reader

Since this is a community of programmers, you might be interested in doings things like this yourself instead. There are a couple of options:

- Quantopian (http://quantopian.com/): Python based, kinda a little bit open source (backtesting only), live trades on Interactive Brokers or Robinhood. Has a big community for stocks.

- QuantConnect (http://quantconnect.com/): .NET based, more open source (includes live trading), live trades on Interactive Brokers, has a similarly sized community but the community's attention is spread to other asset types like Forex as well.

Both have numerous example algorithms you can clone and run without much trouble. An example vaguely suited to investing: https://www.quantopian.com/posts/modern-portfolio-theory-min...

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I'd just like to quote an old comment here:

>One thing I see every once in a while on HN is people with the belief that they can spend a week or two knocking out an algorithmic trader and start raking it in. In order to break this illusion I would recommend: http://financial-math.org/ http://www.quantresearch.info/

Thank you for this. My thoughts exactly

Totally agree. I was aiming more for those who just want to rebalance their portfolios every month or something like that, though I acknowledge that the services I linked to do have communities interested in active trading.

This is terribly dangerous advice and I highly recommend against it for any sum of money you are not prepared to lose.

Gambling is not a replacement for investment, this is off topic to an article about consolidation of low cost funds.

I'm not sure where everyone got the idea that I was advocating for high-risk active trading. I proposed using these services for "things like [Betterment]" and posted a link to a Markowitz minimum-variance portfolio rebalancing algorithm based on low cost sector ETFs. There's nothing crazy going on here.

As others have pointed out, what this comment proposes is wildly different to what Wealthfront and Betterment do. Active trading, algorithmic or otherwise, is unlike buy and hold investing which Betterment and Wealthfront advise. Buy and hold is also simpler. The value-add of a robo-advisor for buy and hold is automating:

A) Keeping a portfolio balanced and

B) Taking advantage of a fairly specific set of tax loopholes in order to make those investments slightly more tax friendly. (where "slight" can become substantial over a 15+ year period of compound interest)

I know that some programmers have written code to automate their Vanguard accounts into something similar to a robo-advisor. This, to me, is much closer to programmers taking an interest in self-built robo than what the parents proposes.

Auto-rebalancing is fairly easy, you setup your account to put deposits and dividends into a money-market account then write a script which moves money from the money-market account into ETFs at the correct ratios. Tax-loss harvesting is slightly more complex but is doable.

Could you elaborate more on the Vanguard scripting? How could one get started with that?

I never proposed anything wildly different to what Wealthfront and Betterment do, the one example algorithm I gave is essentially buy and hold with rebalancing just like Betterment/Wealthfront, just using a different portfolio optimization strategy than they do.

I never advocated for active trading.

Also don't forget about Quantiacs (https://quantiacs.com/) -- Quantiacs supports both Python and Matlab, and is focused on managed futures -- not equities. It's open source, and unlike quantopian or quantconnect -- Quantiacs actually matches your algos with institutional investors and shares the profits with you....and you retain 100% of your own IP.

Also Quantiacs: https://www.quantiacs.com

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