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But isn’t there a strong financial incentive to try to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing, whether it’s an algorithm or a human executing the trades? Otherwise it seems very easy to lose a lot of money. I can't find the article, however a guy once drop a million in bitcoin using a trading bot on a short sale.

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There's typically multiple layers (at different points between tick to an order hitting an exchange) of risk-management/circuit-breakers that prevent these types of things from happening at most shops that know what they're doing. No one wants a repeat of Knight Capital's 2012 meltdown.

I would imagine it may be easy for an unsophisticated/hobby "algo-trader" to make this type of mistake but with over a million in capital, you should probably be a bit more prudent with risk management.

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