Stock Market, Business, and Investing General - News, Tips, etc

[tradecode]

Any Forex lads here?

I am a struggling forex trader.

I have just spent the last 20 years developing one trading bot. I am something of a veteran C programmer and metatrader programmer.

My work is fully automated, I am trading a live account with $1,500 balance.

 

[Irregardless]

Metals depends on the type. They fuck with PM prices as well quite often and we had a discussion on platinum and palladium which haven't steeply risen in price in the adjacent PM thread.

I've had an interest in gold and silver since, even though the real value doesn't necessarily reflect the USD's inflated value, they still seem to be performing well, but mainly because I like the idea of having a gold bar on my desk.

From (my) agriculture based perspective, I think betting on water rights might be a viable strategy in the west coast and the plains states. Issue is farmers might just say fuck you and blow your shit up like in the California Water Wars and how the state interprets water rights when changing the law will become a big FUCK YOU. I don't have (yet) money to make major investments in this but I'm looking at water rights in the current areas which I'm not priced out by corpos. Groundwater and maybe surface rights, but no river water rights since you loose those if not used.

Austin, TX (Eastern side towards Houston, rumor is they're gonna build a aqueduct out from Milam, TX)
Cheyenne, WY
Boise, ID (especially since there's a major semi fab out)
Trementon, UT
Spokane/Cour-d'alene area (Lots of pollution in the area so good groundwater is hard to find)
Clark River upstream of Kalispell, MT (There's a Semiconductor company there allegedly dumping waste into the river at the city there, so this would be a hedge bet, also EPA cleaning up an other superfund there is going to be "finished").

I'd consider the area between Missoula and Hamilton... But already carved into 5 acre lots...

This is really interesting and sorta reminds me of the "buy a plot of land and have a fuck ton of solar panels installed" thing that I saw going around a while ago. I know nothing about that industry, but in your opinion what is the plan and ROI on investing in something like that? I'm not sure if it's something an uninformed individual like myself could/would be able to get into, but I'm interested in what the ROI is and what risks (outside of what you mentioned) go into it.

I am a struggling forex trader.

I have just spent the last 20 years developing one trading bot. I am something of a veteran C programmer and metatrader programmer.

My work is fully automated, I am trading a live account with $1,500 balance.

That's fuckin cool.

Idk if it's shitty to ask, or if you don't wanna give away the secrets, but I'd be interested in running your with the same margins if you're willing to send the code. Idk if that's not a thing people do, but thought I'd ask.

 

[tradecode]

Sorry but sharing code is not something that I do, especially with a project that is taking me 20 years of my time.

Have a nice day

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

This is really interesting and sorta reminds me of the "buy a plot of land and have a fuck ton of solar panels installed" thing that I saw going around a while ago. I know nothing about that industry, but in your opinion what is the plan and ROI on investing in something like that? I'm not sure if it's something an uninformed individual like myself could/would be able to get into, but I'm interested in what the ROI is and what risks (outside of what you mentioned) go into it.

You can:
1) Invest in companies buying/manging water rights such as AWK, CWT, WTRG, etc (A safer solution)
2) Buy water rights separate from the land to sell to larger farms (Depending on year/contract ROI will be different)
3) Buy water rights with land that you get some exemption for and hope that the city will build out a pipeline to your area, this is the case with Austin, TX, and LA - see CA water wars (Higher risk and requires a certain amount of rights to negotate with the city effectively, also see water transfer comment below, also farmers might wack you)
4) Buy some "extra" water rights to your ag op you can divert (Lowest ROI but your risk is running an agricultural operation lmao)

2,3,4 are kinda expensive. Think of it like purchasing mineral rights but with probably a know deposit.

A basic explaination of water rights
​

Spoiler

There are several types of water rights:
1)Riparian Rights - Usually requires ownership of land next to a water source (river/lake) see end note *
2)Prior appropriation rights - Water rights granted to first to request said rights historically for a beneficial purpose (You might be competing from someone who can trace it back to the first settler family in the area in drought years). You cannot store for "dry" years in most states and loose the right if not used. You may also not draw more than is specified and/or nessisary. Most of the western states follow some variation of this rule. Some states allow you to "take" more than allocated water if you return the same amount in some form (that's not waste water)
3) Groundwater Rights - Use of water underneath the surface that allows you to drill a well. Usually hard to "lose" vs riperian
4) Water catchment - Law currently developing, basically catching rain/snowfall into a cistern and storing it.
5) Moving between aquifers and watersheds is generally hard if not impossible out west (IDK about the east)
6) You can sell the right (like a car), lease it, or contract an obligation to provide a pre-specified amount per year
7) Some states you may loose water rights not using them, this is most common with riperian rights, does apply to groundwater sometimes
8 ) CA does some unicorn "community allocation of water" bs as a holdover of Spanish law I don't fully understsand.

It must be noted that depending on state law, riparian, groundwater and catchment may or may range from extremely hard to get to meh and may also have prior appropriation apply.

By region:

Western states:
Rainwater/snowfall collection is illegal generally due to the demands of the Colorado river treaties (esp if you divert). Land and water rights are usually separate and you will be sued into oblivion if you piss of the locals enough because water usage is a big issue. Riparian rights are easier to get than groundwater but usually cannot be diverted.

Cour 'd Alene river watershed has a lot of pollution. If you can get somehow unpolluted water it's a premium due to mining issues. Same with Butte's Clark Fork due to mining.

Texas :
Due to it's size and varied geography is unique riparian rights are heavily restricted, groundwater rights laws are pretty loose (If you own the land you have a right to drill for personal use) may not be diverted without state/EPA approval in some areas (west of I-35 particularly). They really don't give a fuck in the east closer to Lousiana since too much water compared to say, El Paso. Some areas have pump limits for groundwater and must be metered.

Plains states:
Mostly groundwater rights, there's a bunch of fighting over whose responsible for the draining the Ogallala aquifer in the region (Hint: All of the states). There are pump limits in most of the areas. Ogallala doesn't recharge well so if it's gone it's gone.

Eastern Seaboard:
Riperian rights may be easier to get than groundwater. Groundwater comes with the land sale usually. TVA is the biggest headache out there. I think collection is ok / don't care as long as its not too massive.
Florida is an outlier due to EPA and wildlife preserve shenanigans I don't understand.

By type:

• Riperian is useless if you don't use it yearly in most of the mountain west (probably the east too). Also a complete clusterfuck if it's the Colorado or Rio grande watersheds Columbia river is easier since leafland is upstream.
• Groundwater okay but groundwater reform is an issue and may fuck you if they pull an AZ and change groundwater to riperian-lite
• If you bet on a city it'll be a long term bet unless you can score a big deal like the area east of Austin
• If you divert enough to a city farmers and locals will probably fuck with you (See: California Water Wars)
• Selling water to farmers will depend on climate, year, and your senority of right and volume avalible.
• Adverse possestion of ground water rights is theroetically possible, but not settled law if someone slant drills you (has never been tested in court)
• Try not to piss off your neighboors if you buy rights in the Great Basin region. You're gonna be pissing people off by just buying so keep enemies to a minimum

*In riperian rights, upstream shall not abridge down stream, and if your watershed crosses international borders downstream of you it is a clusterfuck. The feds must guarantee an amount of water to the other nation, and the states must guaranteee an amount to the feds, etc etc.

 

[Lichen Bark]

My work is fully automated, I am trading a live account with $1,500 balance.

The real question is, are you making any money with the program? How does one keep the source code for this secure? I'd be worried I'd attract attention if I started to amke real money using a bot.....although I imagine a lot of the trading is bots anyway. Is that a concern today?

 

[tradecode]

The real question is, are you making any money with the program? How does one keep the source code for this secure? I'd be worried I'd attract attention if I started to amke real money using a bot.....although I imagine a lot of the trading is bots anyway. Is that a concern today?

I am not making money yet considering that I only have a $1,500 account, lol..

As long as you're trading through a fully regulated brokerage that is actually processing your trades and offsetting them onto a third party there's no concern they don't care how much you make.

I can't really speak for how much of the market is bots and how much isn't and I really don't care all I care about is what I'm doing.

I don't use the basic indicators, such as macd and RSI. I do not use moving averages. I am not a believer in back testing, it is purely mathematical nonsense.

Having said that, it is entirely possible that my work is pure nonsense and garbage, but if so it's my 20 years that I wasted, right?

I hope you're having a nice day.

 

[Junkers 87]

Having said that, it is entirely possible that my work is pure nonsense and garbage, but if so it's my 20 years that I wasted, right?

I'm curious. It takes a lot of dedication to commit to something for 20 years. Is there something inherent in the forex market that fascinates you, or is it the pursuit of creating a perfect (or near-perfect) trading bot that drives you?

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

For those of us who have significant investments in risky assets (stocks) - what's the alternative for safer now? US government bonds are losing money with lower interest rates and high inflation.

Stocks are the place to be for long term under the assumption that things continue as they have.

The problem is if you assume various shit hits the fan scenarios, stocks are still the best option even in hyperinflation/deflation situations.

However, there is one thing you can always do. And that’s expense reduction. What does this mean?

You have basically two things in this life - time, and effort (work). Money allows you to switch between these and in someway store them. Stocks basically turn time into money which is stored work.

But you can spend time and work and money to reduce future needs. A simple example is grid-independent solar - pay $20-30k today and then pay nothing for power for 20+ years. Sure, you can do a cost-benefit analysis to see if/when you break even - but the key is you removed a line item from your budget entirely. Adding a plugin hybrid or an EV (if appropriate) could entire remove energy purchases from your budget; completely isolating you from that market and its effects.

Paying off your mortgage does something similar and takes away having to do the loan vs investment calculus (which is much less favorable than when you could get 2%).

You don’t need to go full schizophrenic prepper to reduce your economic exposure.

But otherwise you can do much worse than the basic bitch bogleheads three fund portfolio as you wait.

(As an aside real estate is widely considered to be zomg best investment ever that only rich whites can do: niggers stay out but you need to do real deep investigation to verify exactly what you’re making and where the money is going, real estate is only a great investment when you are leveraged up the ass AND things go well. It’s painful to do the real accounting and realize that your great real estate investment is basically a below-minimum wage job combined with a worse-than-stock-market appreciation juiced by extreme leverage. But for the refinance question, build a spreadsheet that shows your break-even point and update it from time to time. Also remember that a large fixed rate mortgage is a great thing to have - all other things being equal - during inflation or hyperinflation. So it’s not necessarily all bad. But using borrowed money to eat/burn/play WWE champions isn’t a great strategy.)

 

[NoIdeaWhatImDoing]

This is really interesting and sorta reminds me of the "buy a plot of land and have a fuck ton of solar panels installed" thing that I saw going around a while ago. I know nothing about that industry, but in your opinion what is the plan and ROI on investing in something like that?

Apparently that was heavily subsidized, at least in some states they forced the energy companies to buy that energy at retail price, that's not longer the case

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Apparently that was heavily subsidized, at least in some states they forced the energy companies to buy that energy at retail price, that's not longer the case

Exactly this. There was a short period of time (in some but not all states) where you could get big federal subsidies for solar installations, some state ones, and force the power niggers to buy from you at retail rates and pay back extra.

Someone I knew installed just below the legal limit to be a power company lol.

 

[CharlesBarkley]

Sorry but sharing code is not something that I do, especially with a project that is taking me 20 years of my time.

Have a nice day

lol I'll share my thinkscript with all you retards because I don't give a shit. Now I just need to have TOS have big ass anime titties in my UI and I guess I'm set.

 

[Peaches the Wonder Cat]

(As an aside real estate is widely considered to be zomg best investment ever that only rich whites can do: niggers stay out but you need to do real deep investigation to verify exactly what you’re making and where the money is going, real estate is only a great investment when you are leveraged up the ass AND things go well. It’s painful to do the real accounting and realize that your great real estate investment is basically a below-minimum wage job combined with a worse-than-stock-market appreciation juiced by extreme leverage. But for the refinance question, build a spreadsheet that shows your break-even point and update it from time to time. Also remember that a large fixed rate mortgage is a great thing to have - all other things being equal - during inflation or hyperinflation. So it’s not necessarily all bad. But using borrowed money to eat/burn/play WWE champions isn’t a great strategy.)

I agree. White Coat Investor did a presentation about real estate returns, and the "returns" were highly correlated to how much time you had to spend managing it. Flipping houses? What profit! Own a REIT? Not so good.


The entire presentation:

There are many people in the FIRE movement who claim they're going to quit their jobs and make passive money through being a landlord. I'd rather keep a high paid tech job that lets you work from home than get called in the middle of the night because the meth addict ruined their pipes again.

But otherwise you can do much worse than the basic bitch bogleheads three fund portfolio as you wait.

The problem with the three-fund is that it was developed when nominal bonds had fantastic long-term returns due to declining interest rates and low inflation. When stagflation hits, bonds suck.

Did you know it wasn't even "three fund" originally? This is from the first Boglehead book:



Look at the differences. REITs and inflation-indexed bonds like TIPS used to be part of the core portfolio (once you hit middle age.) They even (properly) recommended short-term bonds for retirees instead of "Total Bond" which contains all sorts of garbage like mortgage-backed securities.

 

[reptile baht spaniard rid]

Yeah I can’t really figure out what the point of bond funds are for individual investors. Either money market it or TIPS probably.

 

[DJ Grelle]

Being a landlord directly is a miserable thing tbh. You'd get shit from renters forever, there always is a new issue.
You're nothing more than a kapo for the system.

Far better investments exist - in my country REITs have a comparable payout without all the hassle.

 

[tradecode]

lol I'll share my thinkscript with all you retards because I don't give a shit. Now I just need to have TOS have big ass anime titties in my UI and I guess I'm set.

I am curious which indicators you use in your bot.

Thank you

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

Being a landlord directly is a miserable thing tbh. You'd get shit from renters forever, there always is a new issue.
You're nothing more than a kapo for the system.

Really depends on the tentant. If you get a good one (Usually white or asian) it's easy. If you get niggers or pajeets good luck. House will probably be condemnable at the end of that lease.

 

[Rootless Cosmopolitan]

I want to recommend you all this book if you’re curious about how things actually went down during the Great Depression and what we can learn from it:

The Great Depression, A Diary

The author was a lawyer and family man in Youngstown, OH. He journaled extensively on politics, economics, and stock prices from 1929-WWII. It’s fascinating. He made predictions and then annotated his diary entries to update their accuracy all the way until the 1970s.

Things I learned:

- if you held blue chip stocks (think IBM) all the way through, you actually came out okay.
- real estate was a terrible investment because your tenants stopped paying but you were still on the hook for increasingly heavy taxes and the mortgage. Landlords razed their buildings to reduce tax liabilities (a strong argument for Georgism).
- if you bought foreclosed farmland at auction, you could get it for pennies on the dollar if you were willing to risk getting murdered in your sleep by farmers.
- government bonds did well until wwii inflation.
- banks were a total shitshow.
- professional class was hit harder than I expected. People stopped bothering with lawyers and even dentists.

The book is very entertaining. The author moans constantly about not having enough work and not having any money to buy “bargains” in real estate and stock (with annotations 10-20 years later like “this would have proven a poor investment”)

 

[tradecode]

I'm curious. It takes a lot of dedication to commit to something for 20 years. Is there something inherent in the forex market that fascinates you, or is it the pursuit of creating a perfect (or near-perfect) trading bot that drives you?

Thank you for your kind words.. I am attracted to the forex because it is the core of the banking business, and I enjoy working on difficult programming tasks.

I am a c language programmer by preference.

 

[Atypical Dog]

The book is very entertaining. The author moans constantly about not having enough work and not having any money to buy “bargains” in real estate and stock (with annotations 10-20 years later like “this would have proven a poor investment”)

You miss all the shots you don't take... but plenty of them miss even after you take them!

There are many people in the FIRE movement who claim they're going to quit their jobs and make passive money through being a landlord. I'd rather keep a high paid tech job that lets you work from home than get called in the middle of the night because the meth addict ruined their pipes again.

I think there's a place for both approaches but I think both are two extremes on a spectrum - passive/asset-based income is best used as a supplement to a career or as a way to make up income while picking lower-stress and lower-paid positions. The ability to choose where you land on the spectrum from "pressure-cooker CEO/consultant tech job living off the massive compensation" to "minimalist FIRE retired-at-40 landlord" is the big thing.

 

[Devolve]

Thank you for your kind words.. I am attracted to the forex because it is the core of the banking business, and I enjoy working on difficult programming tasks.

I am a c language programmer by preference.

Hey Tradecode, Ive only read a small portion of your posts here, specifically regarding your time developing a trading bot and running it with a small portfolio; I guess I have some questions regarding this.

Whats the point of developing a trading platform (particularly something high performant like C or C++) for 20 years if your portfolio is so small? the reason I ask is that generally speaking people would pick up tooling from a trading companies that run "arcades", or companies that recruit traders to use their platform to trade. Typically the concern of traders is to find performant strategies and work with the already existing engineers at the firm to work on feature requests for their platform if there are shortcomings that you cant work around. Given you can prove through some benchmark that your strategies work at some latency profile to some volume saturation, you could pretty easily join a firm to execute your strategy at a much larger capacity and probably at a far lower cost on your end, since they will provide the data, infrastructure, platform, and even trading funds for a fee or cut of your profit.

Additionally, wouldnt the infrastructure be the bigger part of your problem? things like colocation to an exchange, processing whatever junk protocol the exchange uses, certifying your setup to whatever clearing firm youre working with, and buying out enough market data (the literal packet captures from the exchange not some derived feed) would be the much greater challenge than whether the application is fast; if youre working with dozens of milliseconds of ping between you and the exchange then youve already lost by a mile and the performance of your application is moot, to be competitive enough to the point where your application performance matters would require your round trip wire to wire to be in the order of a couple hundred microseconds.