Dear @nithin
Zerodha has been at a forefront of technology and information race. You have made both technology and information accessible to retailers.
With initiatives like varsity, Tradingqna you made information/education about “all things trading and investing” easily accessible to the public.
Initiatives like @smallcase even made mutual funds style portfolio investing easily accessible, understandable to the retail.
Streak made algo trading similarly accessible to the public.
I am wondering why such steps has not been taken for API and algo trading.
We pay miniscule fees in terms of brokerage, AMC and still get such extensive services from Zerodha and co.
But even with 2k pm fees for API access no such facility is provided to us.
I am new to algo trading and would love to have a help and support from zerodha just like I get for trading on kite.
What you can do is appoint some tech support who will guide a newbie through the installation and setup of the algo on his machine. You can create few sample algos (like examples provided by streak on their platform) and sample UIs etc. And get it up and running on the clients machine using remote access or by instructing on phone.
Kite.trade forum is of no use. Believe me. Here on TQA we have our beloved @siva who has patience to reply even silliest questions. On that forum no one gives shit about a newbie. I dunno who the hell runs that forum. It feels like as if forum is by and for Tech wizards and engineers.
I know at least 6-7 ppl from tweeter who were willing to try API and algo trdaing but couldn’t do anything after frustrated attempts. Its not as if retailers aren’t looted in this field. I was asked upwards of 50k for simple algo of ORB in python. Was told that this is 3-4 weeks work and there are many complex things like “UI”.
Plz look into this. This is of utmost importance to increase retail participation in Algo trading.
To use the Kite APIs, knowing programming is like a bare minimum. There is no way a non-programmer will be able to use that. The kite forum is meant for people who know to program, which is like the basic requirement. If you don’t know your program, it can be extremely dangerous to your trading account.
My advice would be to maybe learn python first before trying to give a shot at using the APIs.
Thanks for reply.
But this will just keep APIs and Algos to Coders and Engineers.
Remember how it used to be a decade or two back. Anybody who want to dabble in stock market would have been told same thing verbatim. There used to be “people” who had sort of monopoly in share market (Won’t take names as do not want to bring in caste/community etc). So all else outside trading families, middle class were told and dismissed with similar words. Even I remember a non commerce guy being told similar things. The person who wanted to dissaud him ( due to care ofcourse) told him about FA and Financial statements etc and confused it a lot ( Guy was arts student. So its obvious he got scared on seeing all the maths and numbers!)
Had Zerodha not democratized the field, siotuation would have been the same.
You are a man of ideas. Think and comeup with some fantastic idea to democratize this field.
You are saying this, Nithin! Are you? You were the one who taught that anybody can learn anything. Anybody can learn trading and be successful. Atleast let people give chance to taste the algo trading.
I am just asking to make it easier, accessible for layman. If you can make a retired middle class person try hands at trading and be successful in it. You can make this happen also. One institute charghes upwards of 1L for teaching. Another one charges upwards of 50k!! You can make all knowledge available to general non IT people for free.
Also just like trading, people will gamble here also. Since how long ppl are using pirated amibroker and wasting hoards of money on thatholy grail AFLs that crooks are selling online? So yes, people do trade algo even now. It wont be more dangerous if zerodha empower them to create their own algos, UIs etc.
Tell me one source “as simple as Varsity” (that’s very important) to learn python. None!
Tell me one forum like TQA where confused newbie can ask silly questions and get queries resolved. None!
Hey, Trading and programming are two different things. Imagine if someone came to you and said, I want to be a doctor operating on a person, but I want to do it without actually learning how to. Or say a person said I know how to drive a car, I want to fly a plane now. Sounds off isn’t it? If you want to use the APIs or create your own algorithms, there is no shortcut, you have to spend maybe a couple of years trying to be a good programmer. There is no shortcut to this.
One thing you don’t need to do in today’s world is “pay to learn”, that is if you have intent. FYI, I don’t think any one on our tech team has actually paid to learn programming. They have all figured it out on their own. You have everything you need.
You find varsity simple, maybe because you have a liking towards finance. There are tons of places online to start learning how to code. Stackoverflow is like zillion times bigger than TQA and has everything a programmer needs to know. There are enough people on it talking about programming and trading.
I wont be bothering Mr. @nithin again for this. But by his own logic there was no need of Varsity, as other materials were easily available. There was no need of streak either for obvious reasons.
If I use your linux example - I wasn’t asking for red hat certification but a simple live cd so that one can get feel of it. You know, you just put it in cd drive, boot the PC, press F10 and viola HE GETS TO EXPERIENCE LINUX!
So I just presented 2 facts
People who know dung about algo and coding are still using algos in MT, Ami etc. They pay 1000s to online crooks for AFLs and get themselves looted.
Zerodha has been always at the forfront of democratizing this industry.
What what I was expecting that - just like streak has some simple sample algos as a introduction to new users, or as in Pi we have sample EAs and codes - zerodha can come up with some simple sample algos, UIs etc in variouos languages kiteconnect supports.
Now whenever a newbie want to get taste of it and just wanna know what the heck is all this a guy from zerodha can call a client, takes remote access and install everything while explaining him a bit. And all this can be paid also.
You must have known a book called “let us C”. yes there were and are lots of books on C but the way that book explained was something on a different level. One can learn trading from various sources but the charm of varsity is altogther different. Zerodha can surely come up with something like varsity for algo trading.
But its obvious that I have spectacularly failed to drive my point here. And I have failed to convey to Nithin what I want to say. So I rest my case here.
Hi @nithin
What I understood by @maddy_Des request and I also subscribe that there should be a plateform and a write-up like varsity which gives a complete picture and a starting point. I myself is an amature programmer of old languages and confident that even python is no big deal however, I m not able to visualise the whole process.
I request you to play a teacher role who gives student efforts a direction. When we search google, we find overload of information and gets directionless. Other points for later.
Regards
We deal with markets and we believe our expertise is that so we run many products around it but we can’t start a programming class or have varsity like thing for programming as that is not our area of expertise. Also there are many online platforms which teaches programming, maybe one should give it a try.
Also try this channel for some basic level python for Zerodha API trade hull - YouTube
My view is that if you would ever be able to code yourself, these resources should give you a headstart, and they are free. Some basic Q&A can happen over the Kite Connect developer forum
If you need someone to develop for you I have some references who will do an ORB for a lot lesser than 50k - pls DM me.