A Want For Quant

I hopped on the big stock trading wave in 2021. I’ve always been interested in the space, but never really had the necessary knowledge on how to make good trades, how to time hold length, or any technical analysis whatsoever. Really, I was just winging it for a long time. I’ve never even made an options contract!

Now, a year later, I still don’t have that knowledge.

There was a long period of sideways trading from August - October 2021 before I just up and quit, till I remembered “Oh hey, I can trade stocks!” In Jan 2022. Made some leaps and bounds up till April 4th, where I tumbled particularly badly and just up and quit again.

In terms of strats, I would just open up Yahoo Finance in the morning, pick a company I thought “looked good,” hold some shares for two or so weeks, and then sell. It’s about the most in-depth strategizing I could fit into my two hours of free time in AP CSA. Not particularly sound at all, though it worked for a while.

Quitting is the wrong word entirely; rather, I sit back and wait for the market to stop being a deep red color. I never really figured out the route to capitalizing on a bear market, and I’m working on that. Trying to jump myself back into the space, and I’ve got a friend that’s particularly good at this stuff.

C++ has a set of use cases that don’t entirely align with what I’m interested in, particularly games, embedded systems, database management, just stuff in general that lacks that zest, stuff that doesn’t scratch that itch of curiosity.

But guess what? It’s used relatively extensively in quantitative trading, which is a sector I find infinitely interesting! It’s an ever-evolving undertaking of alogrithmically “solving” the market, something you would reason as particularly impossible. It’s just so fun sounding.

I don’t really have the means or knowledge to do so yet, but I really want to make some algorithmic trading software with my free time in college. I know for a certain fact that it’ll probably never resolve to a profit, but it just seems so fun and unpredictable and educational! It’s what drives me to learn C++ faster.

For now, though, I’ll just try to get goodish at human trading. The robots come later.