Ask HN: Automated trading on April 1

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2397424

by dman • 15 years ago

83 29 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Would love to hear from folks who build automated trading systems based on Semantic analysis about how they handle the goofy stories on April 1.

upgrayedd6• 15 years ago

Related: are there any good sites/communities/blogs to discuss HFT that anyone can point to?

Am really interested in this field, anything like a crash course in what it involves would be nice by anyone familiar.

How much cash do you generally start with, and how liquid are you?

ezl• 15 years ago

check out quant.ly

upgrayedd6• 15 years ago

hmm: http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/quant.ly :(

Is it just quant talk though? Isn't there enough of that on NP, Wilmott, and QuantNet?

Or am I silly in assuming quants on those sites work mostly for i-banks, hedge funds, and more established players?

Do partners in HFT firms function on the same level, as say the guy structuring CDOs at Bear Stearns? I thought there was a difference, but this is another reason for the wide questions; the nature of what HFTs do is a little vague and not clear from Google searches.

nicelios• 15 years ago

http://howtohft.wordpress.com/

upgrayedd6• 15 years ago

Thanks, good links in the blogroll as well, appreciated.

minimax2• 15 years ago

http://www.wallstreetandtech.com/

http://highfrequencytradingreview.com/

Gaussian• 15 years ago

Try NuclearPhynance.com

RiderOfGiraffes2• 15 years ago

Cool to see that the second time you submitted the question you got some answers.

dman3• 15 years ago

It wasnt the second time. Since it was an Ask HN, people continued voting for it from what I guess is the ask tab on the main page. At some point it picked up ~15 votes and broke on through to the main page. Also, if you look at the posts so far, none of them answers the question.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 15 years ago

  > It wasn't the second time. Since it was an Ask HN,
  > people continued voting for it from what I guess is
  > the ask tab on the main page.

Ah - nice to know that happens sometimes. I guess you must have deleted your rather wistful comment lamenting that no one had replied.

  > Also, if you look at the posts so far, none of them
  > answers the question.

I wonder if there's no one here who uses semantic analysis in automated trading systems. Maybe the semantic analysis people who are here felt excluded by your question.

Who knows. Perhaps there's a better question to ask, or a better way of hooking the people you want into answering.

But I'm pleased you got traction, even if you haven't actually got answers.

danielamitay• 15 years ago

A shame that there aren't any responses (yet) from people with relevant projects.

Is it possible that those programmers merely take the easy (although not completely fool proof) route and exclude all data from April 1, and all data that refers to April Fools Day?

jonah• 15 years ago

Somewhat Related:

Does Anne Hathaway News Drive Berkshire Hathaway's Stock?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341008

yoblin• 15 years ago

Valid. If everyone else is using the same news, doesn't matter if it makes sense or not.

minimax2• 15 years ago

How many goofy stories have you seen today that affect publicly traded companies? I don't think I have seen any yet.

dman3• 15 years ago

Google launching a new product. Atlassian entering into gaming. TSA mandating self pat down system. Oracles Ellison accused of running Executive fighting ring. Facebook and Zynga team up to merge Romance and gaming. Toshiba develops 3-D monocle. Nvidia to unlock SLI on AMD 990 series motherboards. NOTE: the Nvidia and Ellison stories might not be April fools jokes, theres no way to tell until the silliness subsides. Edit: Google hiring auto-completers. Could affect employment related numbers.

sebg• 15 years ago

The thing about building automated trading systems (related or not to Semantic analysis) is that the things you tend to track are compared to other things you are tracking. After all, if there is an issue with a data stream you wouldn't want to bet the farm on it. You check with other streams. So goofy stories on april first wouldn't affect the algorithms too much unless they were reported the same way in disparate news/feed sources.

TheSwede75• 15 years ago

Read as "Automated Trolling."

WalterGR• 15 years ago

"Trading" is discussed on Hacker News at about a 1.5-to-1 ratio with "trolling". FYI, Google Fight accepts the same "site:" specifier that Google Search does. For example:

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=si...

If you have reading problems, you could use that technique to determine which of 2 words you're more likely to be reading here.

datasink• 15 years ago

http://www.advancedtrading.com/infrastructure/229301185

Serious HFT players are either relying solely on news feeds that won't include April Fools stories or are factor in the date for sources that might report them (like CNN). All of the April Fools stories from legitimate news providers have also clearly explained these were jokes and didn't focus a piece primarily on one company.

nivertech• 15 years ago

  date = today();
  if (date.month() == APRIL && date.day() == 1) {
    robot_trader.take_day_off(today());
  }

Ask HN: Automated trading on April 1

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