Hacker News Reader

baccreditedon Ask HN: Anyone making money through algorithmic trading?

Yeah I made 21.4% in 2017. I wrote my own algorithms and did back-testing with custom ruby code and data from ycharts.com ($) and brokerage.tradier.com (free if you have an account). Ruby is a weird choice in this area as most probably use r or python, but I love ruby.

The key for me is to focus on long-term trading strategies that are at least a year long. The HFT guys and people who spend their time on quantopia and the like have a day trader mentality.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thanks for asking this question, I will look for you on twitter.

baccreditedon Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire?

I intend to give most of it to watsi.org to keep others out of coffins.

baccreditedon Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire?

Sorry - if you sign up this site will allow you to input your monthly savings, spending, and net worth. Then it will estimate the amount of time before you achieve Financial Independence. It is free. I'm a big fan.

https://lab.madfientist.com/pages/help

baccreditedon Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire?

Haha - family of 4. Expensive travel hobbies. Too much house. "Fatfire"

https://www.physicianonfire.com/fatfire/

baccreditedon Ask HN: After earning how much money are you planning to retire?

5.6MM

  based on spending 18,668/mo = 224K/yr
  25 x 224k = 5.6MM

  assumptions:
  - withdraw 4% per yr
  - earn avg 7%+ per yr
  - inflation 3%

Money will last forever and I will die with bigger balance than day I retire.

http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-sim...

ps. I will hit this number in 47 months. Here's how I know: https://lab.madfientist.com/

baccreditedon Ask HN: Whats the best way for a Software Engineer to learn finance?

Hello - fellow software engineer who dabbles in quantitative investing here. I would start with episode 1 of Meb Faber's podcast: http://mebfaber.com/podcast/

And listen to all the episodes. Take your time, it took me about a year to get through them all.

One of my favorite guests was Gary Antonacci. I read his book Dual Momentum Investing after hearing his episode. I now use his algorithm for a sizable portion of my portfolio.

I believe all of the day-trader focused algorithmic contests like Quantopian are a joke. Don't waste your time. Quick trading strategies are a race to ZERO as quality AI systems will crush all the humans in the long term.

I have found it possible to design profitable long-only strategies that only trade once every 6 months or per year. You may find your own niches. I backtest my algorithms with homegrown ruby code and data from tradier.com (free with an account). I trade the good ones at motifinvesting.com which lets you establish a track record.

Good luck! Please share your twitter handle so I can keep tabs on you. I'm at @baccredited

baccreditedon Ask HN: How plausible is it to continue becoming a lifelong programmer?

>What should I watch for if I want to go down this path?

Watch out for age discrimination. The best way to fight it is to start saving immediately for financial independence if you haven't already. Once you have F.U. money you can work on whatever you want--paid or unpaid, it will not matter.

Collins - The Simple Path to Wealth is a good book with the basics of how to achieve financial independence.

baccreditedon Ask HN: What's an (article|book|vid) that changed the way you view programming?

Agree with this. Even just reading the first 50 pages or so will likely make you much better at your job.

baccreditedon Goldman-Backed Circle Buys Digital Exchange Poloniex

'The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.'

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-america...

baccreditedon Ask HN: What is in your vimrc?

cat .vimrc

  set background=dark

baccreditedon Ask HN: What Algorithms are you using to make money?

Once a month look at year-over-year total returns for VOO, VXUS, and BIL

keep 100% of your portfolio in one of 3 funds: VXUS, VOO, BND

use chrome, not firefox which is broken http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?VOO,BIL,VXUS&n=25...

VOO Highest? buy or continue to hold VOO

VXUS Highest? buy or continue to hold VXUS

BIL highest? buy or continue to hold BND

baccreditedon Ask HN: What Algorithms are you using to make money?

GEM - a dual momentum trading strategy that requires a couple of minutes work each month and almost never makes a trade. Highly recommend the book.

https://www.optimalmomentum.com/gem_trackrecord.html

baccreditedon Ask HN: How do you plan your travel?

Check out backroads.com and their trip itineraries. If you can afford backroads try them out (they are great). If you can't afford them, piece together your own trip with cheaper lodging and self-booked activities.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Help me generate an idea for my next project

Find a way to overlay an ERC20 type system on top of a zero fee coin like XRB, IOTA, or other. Not what you asked for but I'd love to see it!

baccreditedon Ask HN: How would you invest $600k for only 2 years?

https://www.peerstreet.com/

Short term loans backed by real estate. Should get you 7 to 10% per year. Started by ex-google guys. I have about 100K with peerstreet and it is performing well.

They have never had a default.

Podcast with the founders: http://mebfaber.com/2016/12/07/episode-32-guest-brew-brett-p...

baccreditedon Ask HN: Introductory Finance for Hackers

Agree with you on the frugality bit. Take a look at fatFIRE, a community of people who save aggressively to retire early but still enjoy a relatively lavish lifestyle after retirement.

https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/

My savings target is about $6MM. I won't need to live like a 'homeless person' as you say when I get there.

baccreditedon Ask HN: As a dev (not investor) which crypto$$$ are you most enthusiastic about?

Raiblocks and IOTA--and their forthcoming competition. Transaction fees stifle innovation. If someone could piggy back an ERC20 type system on top of a zero fee coin we would see an explosion of cool tech. I have things in my ideas.txt file I would start building immediately.

It costs 58cents to send a fraction of an ETH right now. Low compared to BTC but ridiculous compared to free.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Introductory Finance for Hackers

If you don't track your personal spending, start now. Your life is a little business. If you save 25x your annual spending and invest it properly, you can declare financial independence, withdraw 4% a year, and live off your investments FOREVER.

I used to run Profit & Loss (P&L) statements for projects at a corporation and first learned the basics that way, but the paragraph above is what really opened my eyes. Once you have skin in the game the numbers become far more meaningful.

baccreditedon Estonia is planning to launch Estcoin

I think Estonia will pull this off and it will be useful. Take a look at their success with e-voting, for example. Is any other country even close to these numbers?

'In the 2015 parliamentary elections, 176,491 people, 30.5% of all participants, voted over the Internet.'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia#2...

baccreditedon A decentralised Universal Basic Income platform based on personal currencies

The trust part breaks this I think. Would like to see a UBI that is distributed to Estonia e-citizens, Fummi, or similar. Something where a real live person is validated once and only once in person.

Fummi is at https://blockchainforchange.org/

baccreditedon Ask HN: Any Alt coins worth buying?

SALT is one of the few projects about to launch an actual service. Now trading on exchanges under $8. The token will cost $25 on the website when saltlending.com launches. My target is $15 within 6 months.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017?

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah. Highest possible recommendation. Everyone I've urged to read it has loved it.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Best books you read in 2017?

Agree this is great, should be required reading for anyone who wants to hit Financial Independence. Natural fit for HN readers.

baccreditedon How would you invest $100K USD aggressively?

I'd buy SALT tokens

https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-SALT

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

I'd love to invest $10,000 and have $500 automatically invested in a bucket of 20 properties all at one time. Doesn't seem possible today but if you offered, I would invest today.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

Better returns. VGSIX is yielding 3.8% for example. At that level of return I'm better off paying off my mortgage.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

Hi - heard your boss on Meb's podcast. It was a good show! Any plans to allow an investor to hit a bucket of, say, 10 or more properties at once? At present I am not able to buy enough different houses on your platform to hit an acceptable amount of diversification.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

Tell you what. Next time the market is down over 20% I'll tweet how much my fundrise and realtymogul quarterly distributions have gone down. @baccredited

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

>Hang on. Are you claiming the real estate market's collapse wouldn't have affected stuff like Realtyshares? How so?

Some impact sure, but let's take an average Fundrise investment. They buy an apartment complex for $20 million and it is at 90% occupancy. They plan to sell it after holding for 10 yrs. If the market was terrible at that time they could hold it a bit longer, and in the interim it is still at 90% occupancy and generating income.

baccreditedon Ask HN: Your experience with realty investment startups like RealtyShares?

I'm not opposed to them but I don't think of them as real estate investments. REITs are stocks, so they tend to rise and fall with the overall stock market. Take a look at what happened to VNQ in 2008 (when the SP500 was down over 36%). VNQ got crushed as well.