I’m stuck in between being a programmer or a trader,
I have been studying trading (TA) for about 40 hours and I have a kind of good concept about it,
the question is, are there any edges out there to have a constant income? if there is, can we find them with average information and skills and IQ, or just super nerds with high IQ can?
please share your experience and advice.
consider that I’m aware that trading needs thousands of hours to be skilful at, and I have a good background of programming that allows me to learn python to analyse data and test strategies much faster than others who don’t have any background
tnx
Hmmm. 
Interesting. 
I think I’ve met people here who were both programmers and traders. I think @krugman25 is one of them. Are you determined to just focus on one of these?
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yes , i have not worked on programming for a long time, so i cant handle both of them
i have to focus on one of them
Krugman25, what a joke he is. Made more money selling the dream than whats he made trading. Reinvented himself too over the years. Be very careful of the charlatans that populate this site @ria_rose
When you say stuck between the two, is this in the context of a career or a hobby?
If the consideration is as a career and you can pick one and only one, I think programming should be the no brainer answer. Since one of the primary skills of a trader is risk management, passing up the pay + stability + risk factors (or lack thereof) of programming seems foolish.
As a general correlation, I don’t know a single trader who knows how to code that doesn’t use it extensively in their trading. It doesn’t mean coding an EA to do all the trading, but it is used a lot to research edges in the market. That said, a good portion of these traders who code do either coding or some other job for their day job.
To answer your question, there are some patterns in the market which (to me) are certainly edges. It’s not just relegated to super nerds, but it does take a lot of persistence, and at times a lot of creativity. It’s often not enough to just approaching trading from the pure trader perspective, and not enough to approach it from the pure programmer perspective. It’s best to have a healthy mix.
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Regarding automated trading systems, I think it is possible, but unfortunately only by trials and errors process. You try different indicators like MA (or combination of MAs), RSI, ATR, etc. with various parameters and see if they work. The problem is that there is no sound theory which explains why one parameters should work better than others (or ones can be potentially better than the others).
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If you want to focus on trading, you can take help from programmers to get the solutions that you can’t find yourself.
You can be a specialist in two areas. Why not?
Trading is an emotion.
Programming is a technical approach.
You can always decide what is more important for you.
But both of these things can bring you good money.
This is a fact.
Nowadays you can be completely free in your choice and this is something that cannot but inspire.
The difficulties of choice haunt us every day. Do not be afraid of it.
Whatever you are going to choose, just know that it will be something you will have to carry on doing day in and day out. If there are parts of it that you don’t like and there are quite a few of those then you’d have a hard time maintaining that profession.
You can be both! But as a trader I would suggest spending more time learning. All the best.
spending time for learning is okay , but if you avoid the practice level , i think its a wrong decision. so first of all please bring practice level.
Hello! Understanding you’re a qualified programmer, why give up your skills and knowledge when you can make an income from that alongside learning about forex trading? Once you’ve learned about the trade, get started with a demo account so that even if you lose the trade, you’re not wasting any money. End of the day, trust me every hour spent learning and practicing the trade will reap you heaps of monetary benefit.
As a programmer like me you have the ability to backtest strategies in a way that a non-programmer would find difficult. You also have the ability to obtain and manipulate data for better than a non-programmer so put that to good use. I wrote a C# program that sits next to my web browser which has a couple of sections to it that enable me to punch in numbers and easily calculate stop loss, pip value etc… It also runs correlations on currency lists so I can list currency pairs based on their correlation with my open trades to make sure that I do not double down on pairs that are expected to move in the same direction as each other. You have the ability to write something to do in a fraction of a second what some traders take minutes or more calculating by hand.
You also have the ability to take the emotion out of trading almost completely. Program the rules that your system uses then all you have to do is to punch in the input parameters and press the button. Your code will tell you if you can trade or not and maybe even what price/stop loss/take profit levels and position size. By programming that you will remove any emotion and any temptation of “well its nearly at my cutoff point” type thoughts. It will be a completely mechanical system.
Freshen up your Python skills with an online course, and when your brain is fried from too much Python for the day, pour a glass of scotch, cozy up in a chair, and read a book on trading. Works for me.
edit… Oh, don’t forget to occasionally get out of chairs and exercise… or you’ll die.
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