Recently, we had a real insightful one-to-one interview with one of our top Bots Marketplace contributor – Peter Heisenberg. We are astounded by how well his bots have served our users. We intend to go into his trading philosophy through this interview in order to show our users how a smart algorithmic stock trader typically thinks. Due to the length of the interview, we have broken it into several parts.
Part I
Question: Tell us more about yourself, especially your trading experience.
PH: I have been trading since the 1990s. Worked as a licensed fund manager in one of the top financial hub in the world. Run and own a hedge fund. I guess whatever you can think of, I’ve done it – stocks, futures, crypto, etc. I am now kind of quasi-retired and just trading my own prop desk. Happy to head out to the beach with a tequila in hand if there is nothing else going on.
Qn: Thank you for sharing. We are really impressed with your achievements. What brought you to StockHero?
PH: First of all, I’ve tried every bot software that you can possibly find by googling. Some look real fancy but lacks substance. Others look like they were built in the early 2000s and their UIs just never really evolve. It is like walking into a mall constructed in 2000 but never upgraded. I actually had a period of time where I was not using any bots just because none of them were good enough for what I wanted to do. However, one fine day, I was taking a chance and searched again on Google. StockHero popped up and I visited the website. The UI looks good to me and it seems that you had most of what I wanted. I gave it a try and was able to easily configure one of my favourite strategies. I’ve been using StockHero since.
Qn: Thank you. We are glad that you continued to use StockHero. What do you think makes a good trading algorithm?
PH: A good algo definitely has to make a profit (duh) for its intended strategy. If you google, you can easily find many many trading strategies like mean reversion, price action, momentum, stat arbitrage etc. Well, you can definitely deploy any of these strategies. But, bear in mind, you will be one of the many thousands that do this. So, my next question is where is your edge? Where does your alpha come from? A good algo needs that alpha and then a consistent performance will come next naturally.
Qn: For the benefit of our readers, can you explain what is “alpha”?
PH: Easy. It means your return above a standard return, like the S&P for example. For me, it basically means your “secret sauce”. What makes your trading strategy so exceptional that you can generate returns that make your parents go “wow kiddo! Take our retirement money and have a go at it”. But, having a secret sauce is no mean feat. It takes years of experience, even decades. You go through the pains of actually losing lots of money while fine tuning your strategies.