NexusTrade · Trading, tech & AI

Algotrading.
Software engineers welcome.

Build and backtest AI trading strategies. Preparing for your first software engineering job? Austin’s new course walks you through your resume, applications, and technical interviews.

Algo traders Software engineers AI enthusiasts
Try NexusTrade free Explore the new SWE course
Join the free Discord ↗ AI Agents from Scratch course ↗ LeetCode interview prep spreadsheet ↗

$25,000

Starting book

10

Episodes published

27

GitHub stars

Public Portfolio Challenge: Original Live

$27,026.02

+$2,026.02 (+8.10%) · since start

Portfolio valueAll time
Starting value$25,000
All-time return+8.1%
Open the live portfolio for the complete holdings and fill history.
View live portfolio

Free community · Ask Austin

Trading, tech, and AI. Bring your questions.

The NexusTrade Discord is open to CS students, working software engineers, algo traders, and AI enthusiasts. Ask about big-tech jobs, building AI agents, or how I make my AI videos.

01 / Algorithmic trading

Build a strategy you can test.

Bring your trading ideas, compare backtests, and ask how AI agents fit into a trading workflow. See the code and experiments behind the Public Portfolio Challenge.

Explore the open-source setup

02 / Software engineering

Prepare for your first software engineering job.

Your First Software Engineering Job is Austin’s new course for CS students, recent graduates, and junior engineers. Build an editable resume, get actionable feedback, prepare your applications with Codex, and practice technical interviews with a plan.

Explore the new course

03 / AI enthusiasts

Ask how it was built.

AI agents, coding tools, and AI video creation. Share what you're trying, ask how Austin builds his projects, and learn alongside people using the same tools.

Start AI Agents from Scratch

Software engineering & AI

AI Agents from Scratch

For software engineers and AI enthusiasts who want to understand the systems behind the tools. Learn the agent loop, tool calling, memory, orchestration, and evaluation with hands-on activities in Aurora.

AI Agents from Scratch course preview
3–5 hours Beginner friendly No code required Certificate on completion

AI Agents from Scratch

A practical, ground-up introduction to AI agents. Understand the ReAct loop, tools, orchestration, memory, and evaluation, then build real agents using Aurora Trading Agent platform as your lab.

  • Explain the difference between a bare language model, a chatbot, and an AI agent
  • Describe the ReAct loop (Thought → Action → Observation) and why it makes agents agentic
  • Design tool-calling workflows and understand why tools, function calling, and MCP servers are all the same core concept
  • Use autonomy controls (whitelists, approvals) to safely run agents in production
  • Connect memory, scheduling, and subagents into a full autonomous workflow
  • Build traces and evaluators (including LLM judges) to measure agent quality
Start the course Get started free

Full course access included with NexusTrade Premium · Cancel anytime

Open source skills library

The Public Portfolio Challenge

Real money, full transparency — plus an open skills/ library you can install in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and 15+ other agent tools.

Get the skills library →
10 episodesModel bakeoffsDeploy dayProduction bugs

The $25,000 Public Portfolio Challenge

I deposited $25,000 into a live brokerage account and made the whole thing public. Every trade, every AI model test, every failure — documented in real time. This is what actually happens when you let AI manage real money.

austin-starks/public-portfolio-challenge

Open source skills library · SKILL.md · MCP

Composable agent skills on the open SKILL.md standard — the same skills/ folder runs in Claude Code, Cursor, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and 15+ other tools. Walk-forward gates, lockbox rules, and deploy discipline from the live $25k challenge.

27

Stars

11

Forks

15+

Agent tools

  1. Clone the open-source skills library
  2. Run skills/install.sh — installs SKILL.md runbooks for your tool
  3. Connect NexusTrade MCP, then run python3 start.py
  4. Paste prompt.txt into Cursor, Claude, or Codex
View skills library →

Ep 1

The challenge begins

Ep 3

11 models, one winner

Ep 5

AI-designed strategy goes live

Ep 8

Week 1 recap: +$2,546, two production bugs, and a rebuilt backtest engine

Ep 10

Episode 10: Fable 5 crushed out-of-sample, went live, then got banned

Learn the fundamentals

Intro to Algorithmic Trading

New to algo trading? Start here before installing the skills library. Hands-on activities inside NexusTrade — included with Premium.

Algorithmic Trading Fundamentals course preview
6–8 hours Beginner friendly No code required Certificate on completion

Algorithmic Trading Fundamentals

Master automated trading from scratch — the structured path from zero to your first deployed strategy. Same concepts behind the live challenge book.

  • Build trading indicators from technical, fundamental, and alt data
  • Backtest and evaluate with industry-standard metrics
  • Deploy to paper or live broker when the stats earn it
Start the course Get started free

Full course access included with NexusTrade Premium · Cancel anytime

Platform access

Build what you watched

Premium unlocks the course, unlimited backtests, AI strategy builder, and live broker trading. Same stack running the challenge.

NexusTrade Premium

Premium accesscourse, backtests, live trading

Algo trading course
6–8 hours — indicators to live deploy
AI strategy builder
Natural language → executable rules
Unlimited backtests
Same engine the challenge uses
Live & paper trading
Public, Alpaca, TradeStation, Tradier, Robinhood
Get started with NexusTrade →

Create a free account and upgrade when you need Premium features.