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Comment by unwoundmouse | Hacker News Reader

What is the reasoning behind why Fibonacci retracements should work? Did you backtest it?

I am working on a program to backtest it. Honestly, I still have much to learn. I do things visually. So I take the little fib retracement chart tool in trading view and make the anchor at the beginning of a price movement and align the lines to the closing prices of significant support/resistance (defined mathematically as any 5 bars such that the the middle bar has the lowest low or highest high in like pyramid form.) If I see at least 3 lines of the fib retracement align, I consider the market to be demonstrating that pattern and I make a bet the market will reverse when it hits the highest fib line. This is much easier to see btw and I have a website where I’m going to write this out if you’re interested: https://seanneilan.com/ I have corresponding Python code that automates this strategy too that I intend to post once it’s ready.

No hate. But just remember that when you think that something is a good BUY, the other side (the seller) think that it is a good SELL. Hence, before trading in the stock market (or in any other market which is a zero sum game, e.g. used cars, NFT), you must be sure that you have more information than the seller.

Of course. Part of the fun is also considering why a trade will go the wrong way too. There are infinite scenarios and part of trading is sketching why scenario X's probabililty is more likely than scenario Y's probability. And this can all be a wash when the completely unexpected happens too.

>Hence, before trading in the stock market (or in any other market which is a zero sum game, e.g. used cars, NFT)

None of these are zero sum games. Especially stock market. Stock market is not a zero sum game at all. https://money.stackexchange.com/questions/72945/is-the-stock...

It is if you are trading.

Ofcourse, if you are not trading, or buy a company stock and hope to get dividends than there is no transaction and hence it is not zero sum. But if you are trading it is zero sum.

I'm sorry to say you're seeing the future in tea leaves, but I guess you're learning some stuff along the way.

I think that trading is ultimately a creative endeavor and no matter how one trades whether it's based on phases of the moon or insider information, one needs to know when they are entering and exiting the market. Trading is an incredibly fun and creative endeavor and as long as one takes the time to precisely define what they are doing, it is great <3

Strange, I would have thought the stock-market would be the opposite to a creative endeavor. Can you expand on how that works for you?

There's so much to study and learn.

Trading algorithms are often implemented in Python/Pandas so learning hackerrank problems about stacks/queues can make one better at implementing trading algorithms. Some hackerrank problems involve hashes which are verified empirically which calculus. Studying calculus can lead to better understanding of the black-scholes theorem and brownian motion.

There's even an aesthetic nature to really good trades which can lead down an interesting path on gestalt theory and composition. Drawing charts is an art form too. Check out https://www.tradingview.com/u/tntsunrise/ for examples of minimalism in the stock market.

A previous commentor on this topic wrote that I'm studying tea leaves but what if for fun I wrote an image processing algorithm that processed the position of tea leaves in a cup and traded small amounts based on that?

Even something like moving averages has applications in programming language theory. It's easier to implement a moving average in a stateful rather than functional way. It's fun to figure out faster ways of cranking out new algorithms to trade markets which leads to better productivity. Markets move really fast. Old algorithms quickly become outdated.

As long as one does not make huge risks (that aren't well thought out), one can trade based on whatever their imagination leads them to. Anything can be tried and systematically backtested. Most traders won't think outside the box but it's so much more fun when you do.

There's so much synergy between math, computer science, betting strategies, art, drawing, data science and visual theory. Everything one studies in trading can lead to 10 insights in other areas. It's just a genuinely fun topic that can lead to a lifetime of happiness.

I lost about $3k doing algo crypto trading (all of that to fees - without fees I made money! aha) but learned a ton about different programming concepts and had a lot of fun.

That's awesome! :) That sounds like an amazing experience. I bet you learned a lot! And 3k is enough to make it memorable but not enough to go into massive debt or anything like that. And sure it's a loss but nobody goes into this trying to lose money. (AFAIK)

Do you know of any studies or articles that shows why backtesting actually works or is useful? I have been reading up on automated and systematic trading, but I do not yet understand how backtesting gives one anything more than warm fuzzies.

For backtesting to work, wouldn't one need to re-run (i.e., playback and not simulate) all inputs from what the real data was (instrument pricing, the weather, social media sentiment, whatever) at a time resolution finer than what your algorithm operates on? If so, that's a massive amount of data that may even be impossible to get.

I'm not sure. I haven't found much on whether or not backtesting works in general. It definitely has its caveats. I think it really depends on what you're backtesting.

Backtesting definitely reveals ways in which trading algorithms can fail though. It can reveal more scenarios than one would initially consider which is super helpful.

Evidence-Based Technical Analysis is a starting point (book), but iirc it was able to show most common indicators aren't able to reject the null hypothesis.

I will also admit I am perhaps overconfident about my strategy. It accurately lined up to when the omicron announcement happened and then I sold my shares in the market and bought them back once I "felt" the market had finished pricing in the information. So I have half a strategy right now. My buy back strat is not great but my timing to short the S&P 500 was absolutely impeccable. And that's why I'm inspired to work on this now.

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