Deploy your first strategy within seconds

How to Deploy an Algorithmic Trading Strategy without code?

Deploy your first strategy within seconds

When I first started trading, I was literally incapable of even experimenting with algorithmic trading…

Algorithmic trading is a paradigm of utilizing computer algorithms to help automate your trading decisions.

The reason why I was incapable of experimenting with algorithmic trading is simple…

I didn’t know how to code.

Photo by Desola Lanre-Ologun on Unsplash

Back in the day, even 5 years ago, if you wanted to utilize algorithms to automate your trading decisions, you needed to know how to code, at least to some extent. There were quite literally 0 tools that I could find that could help me develop trading algorithms.

Eventually, after I gained some programming experience in Python and Java, I had discovered new platforms like Pluto.fi and Composor.trade.

But when I first started trading and even before I learned how to code, being a great software developer and data scientist was a necessity.

Today, that is no longer the case.

I’m going to show two easy ways to create a highly configurable automated trading strategy within seconds. You can backtest the strategy, update the parameters, and deploy it live for real-time paper-trading. It literally takes 3 clicks to get started, and the best part is, you don’t need to have any programming experience whatsoever!

Option 1 (no effort) – Copying an Existing Strategy

First, you need to open NexusTrade and go to the strategy library.

Pre-configured active trading strategies

The library allows you to take pre-configured strategies, backtest them, and save them directly to your account.

An active Apple Trading Strategy

This page has a lot of helpful information that may be difficult to digest at first glance. The first thing you’ll notice is a chart. The chart shows the strategy’s performance across the past 5 years. The green line (or red) line is the strategy’s performance, and the grey line is the performance of the baseline (SPY). To the right side, we have what the current simulated positions and some key portfolio statistics. Some of these include

• Percent change: How much the portfolio gained over the period
• Sharpe ratio: A measure of returns adjusted by how volatile (or risky) the portfolio is
• Maximum drawdown: What is the greatest loss the portfolio experienced from peak to trough

After you find a strategy that you like, you can save it to your profile, and click “Launch to Market”.

The Portfolio Dashboard with the “Launch to Market” button

Then, voilá! You’ve just deployed an algorithmic trading strategy in exactly 3 clicks! 🥳 Maybe 4, but you get the idea.

Option 2 (little effort) — Create Your Own

The library is a way for new users to get inspired and get started with algorithmic trading. However, it alone will not make you a successful algorithmic trader. Algorithmic traders are capable of developing their own strategies by utilizing theories or hypothesis testing, and seeing how well those theories hold up over time.

NexusTrade offers two ways a trader can create their own strategy. They can use the traditional no-code UI, which has the maximum amount of configurability and can express the most complicated rules you can possibly imagine.

The no-code NexusTrade UI

Or, users can create a strategy using Aurora, the AI-Powered Financial Assistant. Aurora is capable of reading plain English statements and generating NexusTrade trading strategies.

Using Aurora to create an algorithmic trading strategy

Before creating a strategy from scratch, it’s important to fully understand how it actually works. You can do that by reading some articles (like this one), playing around with NexusTrade, or even talking to Aurora and asking her questions.

Talking with Aurora. She often gives suggested responses for the user

The most common error people run into with NexusTrade is not fully understanding the tools that it offers. A strategy in NexusTrade is evaluated as a complex syntax tree, that translate into the rules you and I would actually use for trading. For a detailed guide for how it works, check out this article.

Getting Inspired

I can (and will) create an entire article on how to generate novel ideas and create your own unique algorithmic trading strategy. In the meantime, you can get inspiration based on what I’ve already written.

I have a plethora of resources available on social media. For example, you can read my other blogs on Medium or Aurora’s Insights to see the capabilities that NexusTrade has to offer.

Algorithmic trading used to be extremely hard. You needed to be a data scientist, a software engineer, and a financial expert. You had to build entire software systems from scratch, and it was extremely difficult.

But now, we have tools that makes this objectively a lot easier. A trader no longer needs to know linear algebra and Dijkstra’s algorithm – they can focus on financials, technical analysis, hypothesis testing, and bringing their ideas to life in the market.

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