lano1106 BASE v2.1 journal

[lano1106]

Stage 6, day 17:

I did put in place my testing code. Doing that did allow me to correct 4 problems in the code (1 memory leak, 1 segmentation fault and 2 logic issues).

I'm not 100% sure that no other bugs are lurking in this part of the code but it is certainly in better shape than yesterday.

All that is needed to see how things are now working is a new trading opportunity detected by my system. This didn't happen at all since last journal entry. Sometimes, it happens many times in a day. Some other times, you can have a period of several days without any opportunities.

[lano1106]

Stage 6, day 18:

A trading plan has been executed this morning by my server. The model did expect a 0.24% yield but the result did turn out to be a nice 4.6% yield.

It seems like my latest change on the trading strategy did turn out to be very profitable as if, I did just unlock something important. If after many other trades, my confidence becomes high enough, I may tweak the trade detection parameters to get more opportunities. Last time that I did tweak them, I did raise the bar very high to make sure that I was cherry picking only the best options because I was taking serious hits with the system losses. If my strategy has become more efficient, I'll probably be able to lower back the bar that triggers trading.

Not everything is perfect. My client didn't crash with the trade triggered stimulus but the displayed data was corrupted. Yesterday fixes didn't catch everything. No problem. With my new testing code, it is going to be breeze to reproduce and fix.

I also did fix another issue when I display empty tables. I set their width to a fixed value but because empty tables don't have a vertical header, the calculated width was incorrect.

As a side note, there is very good chance that my next program will be OF and I feel like I start to be affected by its TID. There is a girl that I haven't heard of for about a year, she did text me yesterday evening and very rapidly, she started to send me nude pics of her. The very first girl that I did chat with from Tinder on SM3 stage 1, day 1 and back then, pretty much same thing did happen. I remember that I was blown away and was wondering if it was a small taste of what to expect from SM3. It did turn out to not be wild all the way all the time... but I find curious that she reappears now.

That and many other situations where I normally feel a mini/unconscious anxiety, I was feeling totally at peace with them and fearless... Pretty sure this impression has a meaning... I thought that some could be interested in knowing about it.

[Omni3]

Is the % yield based on the trade investment amount, the risk amount or on your overall 'bank?'

[lano1106]

Is the % yield based on the trade investment amount, the risk amount or on your overall 'bank?'

The trade investment amount. The execution span did last about 40 minutes. That was not my fastest execution. Sometimes, it can be over in less than a minute.

The system decision making has matured a bit over the weeks. It now better knows when to adjust the execution aggressiveness based on market conditions.

[lano1106]

Stage 6, day 19:

Horrible trade sequence during the night and this morning.

Trade generated data did make my client crash again. Still in the latest feature added. I did some preliminary investigation and I think that I have a pretty clear idea of one of the issues causing the crash.

My server has been able to connect to the exchange during its maintenance window. During the maintenance, it did send bogus data which did trigger a losing trade. The maintenance are communicated by email. My server will need an email hook to disable operations during the maintenance.

Finally, an unexpected error did occur in the middle of a trade execution which made it stall inside my server. This one, I don't understand yet what did happen.

That was too much to keep the server operation going. I did pull the plug for now on trading because I have a backlog of problems to investigate and correct before continuing the trading...

I know that having problems is positive because having them happening is the only way to discover the remaining issues in the system... but that was too much in a single day. I was believing that some sort of stability was reached...

Let's fix problems. one at a time... Everyday, my system is getting better...

[Omni3]

Is the % yield based on the trade investment amount, the risk amount or on your overall 'bank?'

The trade investment amount. The execution span did last about 40 minutes. That was not my fastest execution. Sometimes, it can be over in less than a minute.

The system decision making has matured a bit over the weeks. It now better knows when to adjust the execution aggressiveness based on market conditions.

Cool, and what is the trade investment amount compared to your overall bank (expressed as a percentage)?

[lano1106]

Cool, and what is the trade investment amount compared to your overall bank (expressed as a percentage)?

Why are you asking all these questions?

It is no secret in this journal that I'm still developing the trading system. It is really hit & miss as you can see in my last entry. Therefore, I set a daily budget to $100. This is an amount that I wouldn't care to lose 100% if something went really wrong but TBH, on my worst days, I must not have lost more than 2% in a single day.

So the 4.6% must be on that value. In my account, I must have the equivalent of $500 in it. For now, this is enough for my dev purposes but I could fund it more if the need arise.

Since you are asking, it helps to clarify my goal to talk about this. I must be waiting to have a string of 7 consecutive profitable days and then scale up the daily budget. I suspect my current strategy to be scalable up to a daily budget up to 1-3 BTC/day.

Beyond that point, I'll probably hit some scalability issues and hit an upper limit to what is possible with this current strategy without tweaking it.

Beside that, if you were attempting to get a peek my risk management, all I can say is that it is pretty much simple. I will simply adapt as I go. that is the goal for now.

[Omni3]

Cool, and what is the trade investment amount compared to your overall bank (expressed as a percentage)?

Why are you asking all these questions?

It is no secret in this journal that I'm still developing the trading system. It is really hit & miss as you can see in my last entry. Therefore, I set a daily budget to $100. This is an amount that I wouldn't care to lose 100% if something went really wrong but TBH, on my worst days, I must not have lost more than 2% in a single day.

So the 4.6% must be on that value. In my account, I must have the equivalent of $500 in it. For now, this is enough for my dev purposes but I could fund it more if the need arise.

Since you are asking, it helps to clarify my goal to talk about this. I must be waiting to have a string of 7 consecutive profitable days and then scale up the daily budget. I suspect my current strategy to be scalable up to a daily budget up to 1-3 BTC/day.

Beyond that point, I'll probably hit some scalability issues and hit an upper limit to what is possible with this current strategy without tweaking it.

Beside that, if you were attempting to get a peek my risk management, all I can say is that it is pretty much simple. I will simply adapt as I go. that is the goal for now.

Hey, didn't mean to upset you. I was asking as, years ago I tried many times to trade but found I was underfunded and kept blowing my bank. I eventually learnt that the risk/reward ratio is the most important aspect of trading, as the smaller the risk on each trade (relative to the overall bank) the smaller the emotional investment/turmoil. 

So, all the best with your trading/bot.

[lano1106]

Cool, and what is the trade investment amount compared to your overall bank (expressed as a percentage)?

Why are you asking all these questions?

It is no secret in this journal that I'm still developing the trading system. It is really hit & miss as you can see in my last entry. Therefore, I set a daily budget to $100. This is an amount that I wouldn't care to lose 100% if something went really wrong but TBH, on my worst days, I must not have lost more than 2% in a single day.

So the 4.6% must be on that value. In my account, I must have the equivalent of $500 in it. For now, this is enough for my dev purposes but I could fund it more if the need arise.

Since you are asking, it helps to clarify my goal to talk about this. I must be waiting to have a string of 7 consecutive profitable days and then scale up the daily budget. I suspect my current strategy to be scalable up to a daily budget up to 1-3 BTC/day.

Beyond that point, I'll probably hit some scalability issues and hit an upper limit to what is possible with this current strategy without tweaking it.

Beside that, if you were attempting to get a peek my risk management, all I can say is that it is pretty much simple. I will simply adapt as I go. that is the goal for now.

Hey, didn't mean to upset you. I was asking as, years ago I tried many times to trade but found I was underfunded and kept blowing my bank. I eventually learnt that the risk/reward ratio is the most important aspect of trading, as the smaller the risk on each trade (relative to the overall bank) the smaller the emotional investment/turmoil. 

So, all the best with your trading/bot.

Omni3, no worries. At first, I was annoyed by the questions. I think that the feeling was from an unconscious interpretation that you were trying to find flaws in my ongoing venture. This might have put me slightly on the defensive.

Past this initial impression, TBH, I see your questioning as beneficial.

1. Despite being improbable to create from scratch a working and profitable algo trading system in less than 6 months, I need keep in mind what I'm trying to do and if it makes sense at all. I was so happy to make a 4.6% trade but in absolute, it is $4.6 in profit for 6 months of full-time work. Your question kinda did bring me back to reality or at least force me to question it. This is healthy. I believe in the potential of the project but I need to be careful to not fall in lunacy.
2. Answering you did help me verbalize and clarify my objective and the plan to reach it.

I can relate to your past experience. I lost thousands in highly speculative bets roughly 10 years ago. The one takeaway from that experience was that if I was to ever return back to trading, it would be through an algorithmic system where decision are automatically taken in a fraction of second where all emotions are aside because only hardcoded rules are followed in the decision making.

[lano1106]

Stage 6, day 20:

I have started to inspect the last debug logs and I have stumbled into a situation that remains so far a mystery.

It doesn't sound like a big deal as the end-result is still correct (on the surface) but I have a FSM governing the order object behavior. I'm not logging all the state transitions and signals dispatched to the FSM to not litter the logs with system aspects believed to be working. However, there is one situation. I know the initial FSM state when it happens. I know for sure some state transitions and dispatched signals. But not all possible transitions and signals are logged. All I know it that few lines below the initial state logging, the exceptional situation logged, I have an error telling me that an unexpected signal has been received in a state that the FSM is in that I cannot explain how it is possible. The signal is expected but not the state in which the order receive it is in.

I have been looking at the code through which the order can go through for the whole afternoon and I cannot explain yet what is going on. This is literally obsessing me. I have added some additional traces. I suspect that the wrong transition is quite common so I should see something during my next run to continue the investigation. The wrong transition only become apparent during the exceptional event as the signals is bit different with this event than the regular normal path.

[Omni3]

Cool, and what is the trade investment amount compared to your overall bank (expressed as a percentage)?

Why are you asking all these questions?

It is no secret in this journal that I'm still developing the trading system. It is really hit & miss as you can see in my last entry. Therefore, I set a daily budget to $100. This is an amount that I wouldn't care to lose 100% if something went really wrong but TBH, on my worst days, I must not have lost more than 2% in a single day.

So the 4.6% must be on that value. In my account, I must have the equivalent of $500 in it. For now, this is enough for my dev purposes but I could fund it more if the need arise.

Since you are asking, it helps to clarify my goal to talk about this. I must be waiting to have a string of 7 consecutive profitable days and then scale up the daily budget. I suspect my current strategy to be scalable up to a daily budget up to 1-3 BTC/day.

Beyond that point, I'll probably hit some scalability issues and hit an upper limit to what is possible with this current strategy without tweaking it.

Beside that, if you were attempting to get a peek my risk management, all I can say is that it is pretty much simple. I will simply adapt as I go. that is the goal for now.

Hey, didn't mean to upset you. I was asking as, years ago I tried many times to trade but found I was underfunded and kept blowing my bank. I eventually learnt that the risk/reward ratio is the most important aspect of trading, as the smaller the risk on each trade (relative to the overall bank) the smaller the emotional investment/turmoil. 

So, all the best with your trading/bot.

Omni3, no worries. At first, I was annoyed by the questions. I think that the feeling was from an unconscious interpretation that you were trying to find flaws in my ongoing venture. This might have put me slightly on the defensive.

Past this initial impression, TBH, I see your questioning as beneficial.

1. Despite being improbable to create from scratch a working and profitable algo trading system in less than 6 months, I need keep in mind what I'm trying to do and if it makes sense at all. I was so happy to make a 4.6% trade but in absolute, it is $4.6 in profit for 6 months of full-time work. Your question kinda did bring me back to reality or at least force me to question it. This is healthy. I believe in the potential of the project but I need to be careful to not fall in lunacy.
2. Answering you did help me verbalize and clarify my objective and the plan to reach it.

I can relate to your past experience. I lost thousands in highly speculative bets roughly 10 years ago. The one takeaway from that experience was that if I was to ever return back to trading, it would be through an algorithmic system where decision are automatically taken in a fraction of second where all emotions are aside because only hardcoded rules are followed in the decision making.

Yeah, I sensed you were being defensive/protective. I get that. Its enough of a challenge sometimes without 'well meaning' others throwing their 'limitations' into the mix, so I'm glad we cleared that up.

That's a good plan. I did think my questions may help you clarify stuff. It's impressive that BASE is keeping you focussed on your project and that you have a 'passive' online income to support these new goals. The profits will come from this one too.

You're making a good investment in your future. Its inspiring. Keep at it. Here's to many $1000 days

[lano1106]

thx for the compliment Omni3.

Yes, BASE is definitely helping me. Another key is that I love doing it. Software creation is possibly my biggest passion since I'm a young kid. I don't care the number of hours spent on the project, it is only fun. I also have the belief that I am among the best in the field.

It has been a while since the last time that I did measure the project metrics in terms of lines of code but the freaking trading system must be one of the biggest software project that I did realize, if not THE biggest.

I think there are 2 scripts/goals in BASE that goes in that direction but I have always knew it was true and BASE is just solidifying the beliefs:

1. Find something you love to do. It will be like playing
2. Pick the one thing into which you excel.

Those are universal truths for success.

[Omni3]

thx for the compliment Omni3.

Yes, BASE is definitely helping me. Another key is that I love doing it. Software creation is possibly my biggest passion since I'm a young kid. I don't care the number of hours spent on the project, it is only fun. I also have the belief that I am among the best in the field.

It has been a while since the last time that I did measure the project metrics in terms of lines of code but the freaking trading system must be one of the biggest software project that I did realize, if not THE biggest.

I think there are 2 scripts/goals in BASE that goes in that direction but I have always knew it was true and BASE is just solidifying the beliefs:

1. Find something you love to do. It will be like playing
2. Pick the one thing into which you excel.

Those are universal truths for success.

Agreed.

[lano1106]

Stage 6, day 21:

I did work on testing the client side where I have witnessed crashes during the last week-end.

One of the issue was that my code is using the Qt Model/View framework. I have 1 model displayed in 2 different views. One of the views is a creation of mine from scratch. I did discover a subtlety in the framework. Despite the model base class emitting rowsMove signals, most (all?) standard view classes don't use it. I had to create a rowsMove slot from scratch. That was the big chunk of the view malfunction issue but testing it carefully today did allow me to find and fix several glitches. I stopped counting them but there was, a least,t 4-5 of them.

I have one more test to perform on the functionality. A sequence that made the code crash. Maybe with all the fixes in, the last test will run flawlessly. Not impossible but I think that it is worth it to give it a shot.

Next, I'll investigate the last critical bug that made my server stall last week-end. If things are smooth, it is possible that I might restart it before going to bed tonight. I would love that happening because a server not running is leaving money on the table...