I have not been blogging as much lately, because I have been completely swamped with work. These days I write oodles and oodles of software implementing financial trading strategies using Excel, and .NET. I will be posting a review of Add-In Express which has been helping me immensely. Another thing happening is that I am almost hired as a permanent on-call consultant for a major investment bank. If this materializes I will blog about it later. Why not full time? Because I don’t want to at least not yet.

Implementing dozens of strategies is interesting because it helps me understand the market. One of my deals with my clients is that I don’t talk about strategies and will not even begin that discussion. Though I can say the following:

  • Simple is better than complex. I kid you not here. All of those complex strategies like “iron condors” make brokers richer and not you.
  • Real traders and investors make money by defining a strategy that is clear and understandable.
  • You need to devise your own strategy and stick with it to see its strengths and weaknesses. You can make money with almost all strategies if you know how to use them.
  • Learn the market and don’t think that a magic formula is going to make you rich. If you can’t make money with your strategy using manual techniques don’t even consider automating it to find a profitable strategy.
  • Oh and if you do go complex you better have a math degree.