How the Stock Market Is Rigged, According to a Robo-Trading Whistleblower [ #Quant ]

Source: Motherboard via BlackListedNews
Date: 11/13/2013
By Alec Liu

“If you’re on Wall Street, you would just assume that you’re being ripped off, unless you were the one doing the ripping off,” says Dave Lauer, who has helped build robotic systems at top firms like Citadel.

This is the opening of The Wall Street Code, a new documentary on the mysterious and sometimes incomprehensible world of high frequency trading produced by Backlight, a Dutch public broadcasting company. The focus of the documentary isn’t on Lauer, who has testified as an expert at a Senate Committee Hearing on HFT, but on Haim Bodek, a "genius" algorithm architect who dared to break Wall Street’s notorious omerta, the industry’s unwritten rule of silence and secrecy.
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Backtesting 12+ Years Data in #MT4 Using Minute Bars #quant

Source(s):  4xTrader, Forex Tester Software
Date: 7/11/2013
by: Admin

Here is a step-by-step guide to setting up a decent backtesting environment in MT4 (MetaTrader 4) using 1 minute GMT (Greenwich Mean Time, non-DST) bars from the Forex Tester Software site.  The data set goes back to 1/1/2001 (12.5 years of data), consists of 1 minute bars, is regularly updated and can be downloaded for FREE here.

For financial geeks, a do-it-yourself hedge fund site #quant

Source: Reuters via Global Post
Date: July 1, 2013 15:34
by: Tim McLaughlin

BOSTON (Reuters) - In the secretive world of hedge funds, algorithms are not shared because they provide the juice behind market-beating returns, and are a key reason why hedge funds charge their clients "two and twenty" - an annual fee equivalent to 2 percent of assets, plus 20 percent of gains.

Now startup company Quantopian offers a tantalizing proposition for software and financial geeks who want to trade like a hedge fund manager - but don't want to pay those steep fees. The Boston-based firm is bringing together a community of people who build algorithms used for trading stocks.

Nearly 30,000 algorithms have been created from the Quantopian community. A few hundred have been made available for free on the firm's website (www.quantopian.com).
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