Fx or stocks and shares programme?

Just out of curiosity I was wondering could it be possible to make a program that linked to your trading account, and made purchases/sold your shares in order to make profit?

 

It almost certainly would be possible but it would not be simple to write in anyway.

 

Thanks for the reply! So could you make a programme that took information from sources as to what to buy/sell?

 

DevianArt ?

 

Try a large company and millions of dollars and then you'll be getting somewhere.

 

i shall take this as a no? i thought that perhaps, if you could put statistics, and lots of if's in, just to give it an edge, so the program would buy a stock or currency at a price, and then when there is fluctuation, it would sell either to make profit or stop loss to stop you losing too much?

 

Financial Engineers and stock market wiz kids have been looking for a perfect stock picking algorithm for ages and ages. Chances are you would lose a lot more money than you would make because a program cannot think like a human, that is - outside of the box. You would have to have a near unlimited supply of money to make it anywhere with that kind of program.

 

This essentially. The problem isn't making a program that can buy and sell. Its choosing what to buy and sell.

 

There's a very large field devoted to doing exactly that, it's called Algo Trading.

If it interests you, read about it and don't give up on it, you don't have to actually trade with real money, you can write a simulator that is a duplicate of the market (stock data is very easy and accessible), and test on that.

 

Thanks for this reply, i admit i had given up on the idea, but you've given me hope is this practice actually legal?

 

Legal? More than 85% of the trades on the NASDAQ in 2012 are estimated to have been done by Algo trading and not manual trading.

Read this qoute from wikipedia:
"A third of all European Union and United States stock trades in 2006 were driven by automatic programs, or algorithms, according to Boston-based financial services industry research and consulting firm Aite Group.[6] As of 2009, studies suggested HFT firms accounted for 60-73% of all US equity trading volume, with that number falling to approximately 50% in 2012.[7][8]
In 2006, at the London Stock Exchange, over 40% of all orders were entered by algorithmic traders, with 60% predicted for 2007. American markets and European markets generally have a higher proportion of algorithmic trades than other markets, and estimates for 2008 range as high as an 80% proportion in some markets. Foreign exchange markets also have active algorithmic trading (about 25% of orders in 2006).[9] Futures markets are considered fairly easy to integrate into algorithmic trading,[10] with about 20% of options volume expected to be computer-generated by 2010.[dated info][11] Bond markets are moving toward more access to algorithmic traders.[12]"

 

Oh wow haha, that seems a bit of an unfair advantage! Thanks for the response,very helpful info! I was originally thinking that it would be petty cool if someone could make a programme to do this, I had no idea that such a large portion of the market was already doing so! I guess this will also make it harder and harder for human traders simply just because they can monitor the markets ever second of the day

 

Exactly what I've done in my stats research. If you're interested on the more mathematical/analytical side of things, slap spreadsheets together and crunch data around until you have a nice, smooth shake. I've discovered a correlation or two during my time.