Working on some execution optimisation related backtesting. I have so far been executing with market orders only. Going towards higher lot sizes, I'd like to optimise for minimal slippage.

First off, on NSE, if you place a market order, you get filled at the best bid/ask right?

If we want to optimise this, the first non-creative idea one can think of is, slicing the order into different lot sizes, and placing a limit order for each slice at the mid point of current best bid & ask.

But this requires your latency to be the least.

Why would latency affect it?

I looked at tick historical data, and there are more than 18-20 ticks in a second (auction and quote combined).

Even if you keep 10 ticks per second, your best bid/ask can shift from the time you place to the time exchange receives the order.

So, the next best thing that people can do is place tranches of orders every 1s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 15s - in their preferred time range, and get filled at the midpoint or best-bid+1/2/3/4/5 in the depth.

What you need is liquidity.

But if you're trading breakouts, then it's highly likely that your limit orders may not get filled if the action is too fast.

So, a retry mechanism is required in such cases.

If nothing works, you convert your orders to marketable and get filled at worse slippage.

** MEGA THREAD ON INVESTING **

I was thinking about what kind of resources I'd want to have if someone has to start learning investing right now, the ones I wish I had two three years back.

This thread is a compilation of the best resources I have come across. 👇👇👇

Let's start with ** BOOKS **

1) The Intelligent Investor - Ben Graham :

Classic book, suggested by investors all over the world. Start with this book.

2) One up on Wall Street

Peter Lynch covers his strategies to find 10 baggers, and describes how an average Joe can do as well as the pros with simple methods and rock solid discipline and consistency backing it.

3) Common Stocks Uncommon Profits

This is a Phil Fisher classic.

It's on the other end of the spectrum as the book dives into a deep qualitative approach in value investing rather than being fully quantitative like Ben Graham's.

4) Security Analysis

Another book by Ben Graham that dives deep into analysing and understanding the valuations of any company you pick up to study.

Interpretation of Financial Statements - preliminary filters.

1. Looking for sustainable competitive advantage:

When looking for sustainable moat, you wanna see consistency - in earnings, in having low debt, in having growing earnings, low spending in capital expenditures, etc.

The longer the company has existed, and if it sells you the same product for years (like Coca Cola), it reduces production costs and other costs (R&D, Training, marketing) slowly as the company ages.

When costs are reduced, margins and profits increase.

2. What to look for in an income statement:

Let's take a look at Apple:

i) You want to see earnings grow at a steady pace. Take a look at the net income below.

ii) Another thing that's important is a consistent and high gross margin.

As a thumb rule, Warren Buffett wants to see a gross margin of around 40% or above.

Although not quite 40%, it's around that range with respect to Apple.

Compare this to Apple's competitors.

Samsung's gross margins are around similar range, highest being 45.7% in 2018, and Huawei had a gross margin of 38.6%.

Do you keep your gold assets in bank locker? You are probably paying some fees every year for your lockers.

Instead, what if you could get a locker for free?

What if I said banks would pay you to keep your gold assets safe?

Time for a thread. 👇👇👇

1/ The major issue with having gold in bank lockers is

- You pay hefty fees on an annual basis to the bank.
- The lockers aren't insured
- There's no real safety/security in case of theft or an unfortunate event.

Is there a work around?

Yes.

Enter "Gold Monetisation Scheme".

2/ GOI introduced the Gold Monetisation Scheme in 2015. The main objective was to cut down India's gold imports.

How it works:

You deposit your gold in bank.
They keep it safe for a fixed number of years.
You get it back as physical gold or cash on maturity.

3/ What should you do to be eligible?

You should take the gold you want to deposit to a Collection and Purity Testing Centre (CPTC). GOI has established over 300 CPTC's across India.

They will take your gold, evaluate its purity, and provide a receipt for the gold quantity.

4/ You take the receipt to your bank.

Create a gold monetisation scheme account in your bank.

Give them the receipt provided by PTC.

Your bank will then convert that receipt to a scheme certificate as part of your GMS account.

When you break down the lives of extremely successful people, you find that their success didn't come from an earth shattering break-through.

Rather, it came from obsessing about a simple idea, fanatically.

Time for a thread about one such idea. 👇👇👇

1/ During world war II, a eleven year old kid checks out a book from the nearest library. The book's title was "1000 ways to make 1000 dollars".

After he reads that book, he makes a statement that by the time he was 35 years old, he'd be a millionaire.

2/ By the age of 35, his net worth was roughly 7-8 million dollars. The library was Omaha public library. That kid was Warren Buffett.

How he got there is an interesting story.

As soon as he reads that book, he decides he should have 1000 dollars before he finishes school.

3/ While looking for business ideas, he goes to his friend Dan's house one day.

He watches Dan fix an old pinball machine (that he bought for $15) in two hours.

Warren asks him if he can fix more.

Dan says yes.

4/ Warren and Dan set up a company (of course no incorporation and all that legal jazz).

They call the firm "Wilson Coin Operated Company".

They go to local barbers and pitch the barbers an ingenious business plan.

Are you planning on handing over your money to an algo trading platform?

Maybe you want to subscribe to a strategy or two and make insane returns.

Here's why you shouldn't do it, and save your money instead.

1/ Maybe you want to have a strategy development company deploy such algorithms on your account with respective brokers.

Or the service itself has strategies that you just subscribe to and authorize your trading account with, and it will automatically trade your money.

2/ When it comes to @Tradetron1 there are a slew of issues.

Let's keep aside the lack of transparency and the total regulatory non-compliance for a moment.

First off, with most of the strategies, the backtests are BOGUS.

3/ Any systematic trader with even a little bit of experience will look at the strategies and tell you which ones are baloney.

Most of them are.

Don't take my word for it. Do your own due diligence.

And, those backtests aren't even for 10+ yrs. Some were done only for months.

4/ Secondly, SEBI has put rules in place on parameters like

- minimum net worth of the company
- qualifications of the fund manager
- minimum number of clients
- minimum amount to start with

and so on, for qualifying people who want to manage other people's money.

50 rookie mistakes to avoid as a stock market beginner - a thread.

1. Watching CNBC and acting on the recommendations provided by the "analysts", "experts" and "fund managers" who appear on TV.

Remember, most of them don't even beat the benchmark index on an annual basis.

2. Giving too much importance to Moneycontrol articles and recommendations. Moneycontrol profits off of noobs. They depend on you to make their money. They get paid by buy side firms who want to dump their positions, and sell side firms whose clients want to sell.

They also get paid to propagate rumours (albeit subtly) about stocks that the buy-side firms want to buy (albeit at lower prices) and sell-side firm clients want to buy. So, if you see a recommendation on moneycontrol, that marks the distribution phase (most of the times).

3. Listening to colleagues, friends, and family on what to invest on, where to invest, what stocks to buy. Usually these are also people who have no real expertise, but started a year or few months ahead of you. They only talk about their winners, you get very excited.

4. Listening to social media "experts". People on Twitter, Youtube, etc., even if they look like they are trading crores, or managing hundreds of crores, have different reasons for trading/investing in something. Typically, following them is the path to the butcher's shop.

You see so many people on Twitter saying

"Infosys ADR is up 5% today."

"ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank ADR ended highly positive today. Good move coming up for Banknifty."

Have you ever wondered what is ADR? You're not alone.

Time for a thread. 👇👇👇

1/ Back in the early 1900s, people were buying shares in foreign countries in the respective country's exchanges (many still do).

There are few issues with that:

- Complexity of the purchase
- Currency conversion issues
- Difficulty in transactions

and so on.

2/ JP Morgan saw this, and thought

"what if people could trade foreign companies

- in our country
- in our currency
- but without the companies having to list themselves here?"

ADR was born.

3/ ADR stands for American Depository Receipts.

It's like a share certificate, issued by a U.S depository bank (like CDSL here), but on a foreign company.

Usually one ADR unit represents one share of the foreign company.

4/ Here's how it works.

The depository bank buys the foreign company shares in the foreign exchange.

This depository bank holds the purchased shares as inventory.

It issues respective ADR for domestic trading.

The ADR is issued & traded in US Dollars.

It looks like every symptom on Google search leads to cancer.

So, when you have a symptom that Google screams CANCER, should you be afraid?

Before I answer that for you, let's talk about Occam's Razor and how you can use it to simplify your life.

Let's dive in. 👇👇👇

1/ In the early 1900s, two physicists studied space and time and arrived at a similar conclusion: things tend to go a little bonkers within the space-time continuum.

Ex: The closer we get to moving at the speed of light, the more we slow down.

2/ Both the scientists arrived at the same results through their equations & derivations. But both had different explanations.

One suggested that the phenomenon was due to the changes that took place within "the ether". Another didn't refer to the ether at all.

3/ The latter won the Nobel prize and the world reveres him as a genius.

The former was the physicist named Lorentz.

The latter was Einstein.

This was the Einstein-Lorentz Relativity priority dispute that we are talking about.

4/ Lorentz's explanation wasn't given preference because according to science, the ether doesn't exist. When that's introduced into the equation, it makes things complicated.

Einstein used no references to the ether, and his simpler explanation rooted in scientific method won.

**Time for a thread**

Through the last three years of experience in the entrepreneurship space, I understood why phenomenons like

- black money
- hawala
- money laundering
- tax fraud
- overclaiming of tax returns
- not reporting income

and other such scenarios exist.

1/ Running a business, especially with all the licenses and the jazz is like standing in a traffic signal.

The signal may still be red. But if vehicles have started moving, they will keep honking and hurling abuses at you for not moving and breaking the rules along with you.

2/ The corrupt system begets corruption.

The government employees seek bribe for every single thing that they are being paid to do as work.

If you don't pay them, your business will not get set up.

If you don't pay what they ask for, they will point out hundred issues.

3/ So, the base for corruption gets set up when you start your business.

You unwittingly become an accomplice to the systemic corruption.

If you don't bribe, your business won't get off the ground and you can't make money.

So, you are cornered to have to pay a bribe.

4/ Now, your business gets off the ground. But you have to get loan to set it up.

You go to MSME. They get you the loan. They also provide subsidy relief.

The catch: The officer asks you to pay 10-15% of subsidy as "formality" to ministers and the chain of command.

A market wizard named Michael Marcus converted a $30,000 initial stake to $80 Million dollars over a period of 10 years.

Here are 28 lessons he considers very important for anyone venturing into trading, from his experience.

1/ The importance of not giving up:

In Fiddler on the Roof, there is a scene where the lead looks up and talks to God.

I'd look up and say, "Am I really that stupid?"

And I seemed to hear a clear answer saying, "No, you're not stupid. You just have to keep at it."

So I did.

2/ On key price levels:

There are key price levels like

- previous day/week/month highs or lows
- round number levels

where you can have 1:5 or more worth RR of trades if you place yourself right.

The key is to hit the crest of the wave, just at the right moment.

If it doesn't work out, you have to get out.

Doing this, you can make several hundred points, risking 1/3rd to 1/5th of what you make.

3/ The secret to getting efficient at trading:

Cut down the number of trades you make.

The best trades are those in which all 3 things check out:

- Fundamentals
- Technicals
- Market Tone

Breakout-retest-breakout

this pattern is among the high probability setups one can trade.

60-70% of breakouts fail.

If the breakout sustains the reversal pressure and manages to break above the breakout candle high,

there will be travel.

You can then take the trade in either of the two places.

1) When price is pulling back to the point of breakout - take trade at the breakout point.

If it closes inside the pre-breakout zone, get out.

2) When price pulls back, then breaks out of breakout candle high.

(1) is lower probability than (2) but higher probability than just taking the trade when price breaks out first.

It also comes with lower risk.

(2) is the highest probability trade (probably with relatively higher risk).

That said

If the breakout is from a multi-week or multi-month compression zone

do not expect pullbacks to happen immediately.

If they do happen, more often than not, it's a breakout failure.

In 2011, a blackjack player made $20 million over 4 months,

and ended up bringing some of the topmost casinos to their knees.

Here's the crazy story of how he pulled it off.

🧵

Don Johnson grew up taking care of his uncle’s racehorses in Salem, Oregon.

After taking interest in them, he began riding them competitively at age 15.

He then became a professional jockey.

As a jockey, he had to stay on a strict routine and take medications to keep his natural weight off and remain slim.

Eventually he couldn't keep up the routine.

So, he quit the job, and went to Philadelphia to manage racetracks.

Johnson was hired to manage the Philadelphia Park.

That race track evolved into the Parx Casino, in Bensalem.

Johnson was in charge of day-to-day operations, including the betting operation.

That's where he started learning about gambling.

Between 1990 and 2010, Johnson’s career has moved from managing racetracks to being a state regulator in the gambling industry.

Around 2000, he started a business that does computer-assisted wagering on horses.