How’s that for a semi formulaic clicky bait headline…
Everybody wants to be rich and or wants to trade stocks. The more that Gamestop, bitcoin and meme stocks make the headlines, the more upwork requests I get to build something to make money for other people? Sure I don’t mind building a trading platform (stocks, futures, or options) but I’m not going to give my secret algorithm. Sure I might fine-tune your algo based on my experience, but seriously, you just want me to build you an algo that sorts profitable trades just for you? Sure no problem!
This is just one of about 7 conversations I have had in the last month. I played along with this particular person because I thought it was entertaining.
[2/9/2021 11:19:56 AM] Some Bro on Upwork: Hello! I’d like to personally invite you to apply to my job. Please review the job post and apply if you’re available.
We are looking to create a program that Analyzes both historic breakouts as well as current potential breakouts that are emerging and Creates an alert with the data. See red circled highlight in the image below.
[2/9/2021 11:19:56 AM]: Chad: The best cover letter I could write is a real-time trading web page of all the stocks that I generate buy and sell signals for over 600 stocks and ETFs. (The site needs a little work as I’m not a front end developer, but the algorithm works well)
Also, I just wrote an article about Stock and Options API with brokerages:
[2/9/2021 2:36:09 PM] Some Bro on Upwork: Hi Chad, Can you please comment on whether you can build us a program based on the job description, and give me a work scope, timeline, potential deliverables so that I can manage our expectations. Thank you.
[2/9/2021 3:30:57 PM] Chad: Hi, That’s wild, about 100% of the time I have to ask the client for a scope of work. I’m only trading futures 5 1/2 days a week, 24 hours a day, finding breakouts turning them into trade signals, send those commands to Interactive Brokers then deciding when to get out of that trade. (this happens every minute) Monitoring the data feed, the trade execution, and that the AWS/EC2 server is up and running. Of course, all this monitored and sent to slack channels. I do this for stocks and options right now, but it’s only on a paper trading account. You want to me write the scope of work based on a screenshot?
[2/10/2021 11:09:21 AM] Some Bro on Upwork: Thank you for the details. Yes, please if you can. To your knowledge, is there an app that does this, too? Or can a program be created? My research shows you still need the human element. Thoughts?
Scope:
Create a stock breakout analyzer program that: Looks at historical data for breakouts. Looks at live stock data and analyze for potential breakouts. Then alerts end user of the program (alerts can be customized to some degree)
[2/10/2021 3:17:54 PM] Chad: I’m a little concerned that you might not have picked up on my sarcasm. I look for “breakouts” in the futures market and the stock market already. (it’s in my cover letter). It’s my secret sauce for my trading algorithms. It’s the essence of all trading algorithms. So I’m not sure what your definition of “breakouts” is? Is it the correlation of the VIX MACD crossover and then the positive correlation with that particular stock? Maybe a large short interest in addition to IV that is crossing HV?
Why just breakouts? What about Breakdowns?
[2/15/2021 1:18:37 PM] Some Bro on Upwork: I want to clarify our expectations. We are not stockbrokers or stock analysts. We are end-users who are looking for something specific. You need to look at your prospective clients as laymen when approaching a solution discussion.
So, would you be able to try again and offer a solution that your expertise can help us?
Your tool looks cool.
We are open to definitely listening to what you can offer on the program. So, if you feel that both breakouts and breakdowns should be in the program. Sure, please make the argument as to how that will help us.
Additionally, if you would please clarify, on your existing solutions, is a human interaction imperative? Your tool in the following link maybe what we need, perhaps a little tweak here and there. Would you be able to walk me through how this works?
[2/15/2021 9:06:00 PM] Chad: The winner’s page comes from breakouts. (breakdowns are when one shorts a stock instead of buying the stock)
The winner’s page (derived from breakouts and breakdowns alerts) are generated at the of close trading. There is no human involvement, well because I think I’m tracking over 1,000 stocks so I don’t have time to get involved in human intervention. These would be close-of-day alerts, meaning these alerts wouldn’t be generated during the trading day.
I could build an alert system. email/slack/twitter/SMS?
It’s been a while since I heard back from this intelligent investor. I should have mentioned earlier that it would be $10k to get the project started that usually quiets potential clients.
Since this conversation started in early February, and the market has taken a significant downturn or upturn, ( I can’t keep track anymore, that’s why I build algos, so I don’t have to), the “Bro” might be either “hold the line” or maybe he has diamond hands? Either way, I haven’t heard from him since.
I guess the icing on the cake would be: “Your tool looks cool.”