How I developed a trading system as a software engineer with no formal finance background

<p>Over the last six years, I taught myself the ins and outs of trading and built a fully autonomous system that&rsquo;s now managing several hundred thousand USD in assets. In this article, I want to share my journey with you. I&rsquo;ll discuss the challenges I faced as a software engineer with no finance background, the strategies I used to develop my trading system, and the lessons I&rsquo;ve learned along the way.</p> <p>Whether you&rsquo;re an aspiring trader with a non-traditional background or a seasoned pro looking for new insights, I hope my story can provide inspiration and guidance as you pursue your own trading journey.</p> <h1>My First Trade</h1> <p>My first foray into trading was actually back in 2009. At the time I was working at an oilfield facilities management company on SCADA systems. I had a handful of coworkers who actively traded, and one in particular I&rsquo;ll call &ldquo;D&rdquo; taught me some of the fundamentals of value investing. He taught me to examine Yahoo Finance &ldquo;profile&rdquo; sections of stocks and dig through debt-to-equity ratios. I thought I had it figured out, opened a Fidelity account, and promptly lost $3500 investing in a Chinese SEC fraud masterpiece called &ldquo;Duoyuan Global Water&rdquo; (DGW) that looked&nbsp;<strong><em>fantastic</em></strong>&nbsp;on paper. I swore off foreign stocks, value investing, and trading altogether for a time.</p> <h1>The Most Right I&rsquo;ve Ever Been</h1> <p>A couple of years later in 2012, I stumbled upon the white paper for Bitcoin when it was still new-ish. I quickly evangelized the concept of cryptocurrency to my coworkers, set up my machine as a mining rig, and joined a mining pool. I think in sum total I mined over 42BTC worth. In 2013 I left the oilfield services company to start my own software company, and like most individual contributors-turned-business-owner, I had no idea what I was doing when it came to sales and marketing. My business survived longer than most new companies, but within five years I was out of cash, and had gradually sold off my crypto to help keep the lights on.</p> <p><a href="https://medium.com/@codingandcoffee/how-i-developed-a-trading-system-as-a-software-engineer-with-no-formal-finance-background-9728bc884af8">Click Here</a></p>