Days to Cover signal

Finance and crypto

algorithmic trading

SHOW HN2013

How I built a trading signal by scraping Nasdaq for short interest

How HN reacted

Days to Cover signal

Roasted

Half or more of the comments are critical

1 positive, 5 neutral or mixed, 6 critical. Score -0.31

LikedCommenters praise the idea of short interest as a signal and the Quantopian platform

ObjectedBacktests on historical data do not guarantee future returns

Summaries made by AI from the thread.

Shown by fawce on Apr 5, 2013. Click the card to turn it over.

89points

51comments

#267of 1,739 in 2013

Top 16%of 2013 by points

How HN took it

RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical

1 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 6 critical, out of 12 comments about the project. Thread score -0.31.

Idea: 1 for, 4 againstPerformance: 0 for, 2 against

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

Backtests on historical data do not guarantee future returns
From 3 comments
- My comment in the last thread opened with a post from this source: Past performance does not guarantee future results" is still the operative principle here. Data-mining…
  tokenadult on HN
- Have their been any studies on the accuracy of backtesting data in predicting actual returns? Comments like yours always appear on these articles... "You can backtest, but you…
  chatmasta on HN
- If an algorithm stops performing after hours or days, it's likely you haven't discovered anything, but are simply seeing the effects of random noise on your hundreds, thousands,…
  codex on HN
Signal underperforms buying and holding SPY
From 1 comment
- When the broad market is rising by over 10% annually, it is very difficult to come up with a trading strategy that looses money. For example, buying SPY and holding it for the…
  stevewilhelm on HN
Profits concentrated in a short period, looks like noise
From 1 comment
- I'd be hard-pressed to call this algo as "working". If you look at the PnL, it makes most of its profit from Sept 15 2012 to Nov 15 2012. The rest of the time, it's either drawn…
  steven2012 on HN
No stop-loss or drawdown protection
From 1 comment
- You should put in some kind of protection for a max drawdown loss, like if you lose x%, you exit. Sometimes your algorithm messes up, or market conditions are bad.…
  vellum on HN

Add a max drawdown exit rule
From 1 comment
- You should put in some kind of protection for a max drawdown loss, like if you lose x%, you exit. Sometimes your algorithm messes up, or market conditions are bad.…
  vellum on HN
Label the benchmark in the chart
From 1 comment
- Very interesting stuff. "The Benchmark" is the SP500 I'm guessing? I couldn't find the answer after clicking around for a bit, sorry if I'm dumb. You might list the reference…
  ad on HN
Include borrow costs for the short side
From 1 comment
- If you click on the code and search for commissions, you'll see how those costs are taken into account. The big missing thing is the market for borrowing the stock to do the…
  fawce on HN

Does the model include transaction costs and market impact?
From 1 comment
- Did anyone actually try this with real money? Does the model include transaction costs and market impact effect?
  niggler on HN
Has anyone traded this with real money?
From 1 comment
- Did anyone actually try this with real money? Does the model include transaction costs and market impact effect?
  niggler on HN
Does this meet Show HN criteria?
From 1 comment
- Serious question: does this meet "Show HN" criteria? I mean I value sharing the algorithm, but I thought that Show HN is reserved for entire projects (ie. sites, saas platforms,…
  polskibus on HN