Yeah. I’m in index funds because someone told the London group “here’s what it means to get into index funds, here’s why it’s a good idea, here’s how you do it, here’s a list of places you can sign up with to get one”. I kind of want to dabble a little in stocks and other investments, but I don’t know who offers that ability and I haven’t looked closely yet.
(My impression is if I was in the US a decent answer would be “Robinhood”. And authors here might not know anything UK specific, which is fair enough. But that’s the sort of thing I’d find helpful.)
How to begin localizing knowledge if you’re *not* in the US. My sense is this is particularly gnarly bec most info assumes you are and quickly gets into weeds related to the US tax system. It seems to me that as a first approximation of understanding investing you should tend to ignore tax structure, but maybe that’s wrong?
Tools and pipelines for programmatic trade bootstrapping. Looks like Robinhood does have an API. Not sure what other packages/api/tools specifically for finance are relevant.
Some brokers are available internationally. I have heard of people using Interactive Brokers outside the US. CFDs are illegal in the US, but an important investment class elsewhere.
I’ve been using Alpha Vantage and Yahoo finance for historical data. I have heard Stooq is good for UK market data.
I’ve started using Oanda and Zorro on an EC2 VM to autotrade Forex. Zorro is also supposed to work with Interactive Brokers (among others). You can try Zorro for free if your account size is small enough.
I have heard there are other options. Lots of brokers have an API. It’s probably not worth your time to write your own backtester/robotrader when you can use one off-the-shelf. You still have to code your strategy though.
Yeah. I’m in index funds because someone told the London group “here’s what it means to get into index funds, here’s why it’s a good idea, here’s how you do it, here’s a list of places you can sign up with to get one”. I kind of want to dabble a little in stocks and other investments, but I don’t know who offers that ability and I haven’t looked closely yet.
(My impression is if I was in the US a decent answer would be “Robinhood”. And authors here might not know anything UK specific, which is fair enough. But that’s the sort of thing I’d find helpful.)
Yes, this also raises a couple other good points:
How to begin localizing knowledge if you’re *not* in the US. My sense is this is particularly gnarly bec most info assumes you are and quickly gets into weeds related to the US tax system. It seems to me that as a first approximation of understanding investing you should tend to ignore tax structure, but maybe that’s wrong?
Tools and pipelines for programmatic trade bootstrapping. Looks like Robinhood does have an API. Not sure what other packages/api/tools specifically for finance are relevant.
Some brokers are available internationally. I have heard of people using Interactive Brokers outside the US. CFDs are illegal in the US, but an important investment class elsewhere.
I’ve been using Alpha Vantage and Yahoo finance for historical data. I have heard Stooq is good for UK market data.
I’ve started using Oanda and Zorro on an EC2 VM to autotrade Forex. Zorro is also supposed to work with Interactive Brokers (among others). You can try Zorro for free if your account size is small enough.
I have heard there are other options. Lots of brokers have an API. It’s probably not worth your time to write your own backtester/robotrader when you can use one off-the-shelf. You still have to code your strategy though.