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Ask HN: Looking for traders that use technical analysis

6 points by zscoops ↗ HN
Hi,

I am working on a no-code strategy-building web app for traders and I am looking for early testers who use technical analysis as part of their decision-making process to provide feedback. Currently, the demo focuses primarily on technical analysis using exponential moving averages, with basic backtesting features.

If you're interested in being part of this early testing phase and helping shape the tool, please send me an email at testers @hellotrader.io or reply here for more details.

Thank you!

22 comments

[ 4.0 ms ] story [ 62.7 ms ] thread
keernan
Public service announcement.

Technical trading is the equivalent of using astrology for investments. It is not a science and has been roundly refuted as junk for well over 25 years. If you are thinking about actively trading or, worse, "technical analysis", by definition that strongly suggests you are either: 1) not well versed in investing and should spend some time reading the most publicly recommended tomes on investing; 2) believe in astrology; or 3) selling books or services related to technical trading which is the only way to make money off it it.

I don't believe using Hacker News to advertise a commercial product relating to technical analysis is appropriate.

zscoops
I believe active traders find value in combining both fundamental and technical analysis to make their decisions. I am not trying to start on debate on technical analysis but I think a lot of people are using it, and prices are most likely influenced by people's actions.

This demo focuses on technical analysis but it's just a MVP, and the technical analysis part was the easiest to implement, and I'm trying to validate the UX. The full version of the app will allow users to define strategies that incorporate both technical and fundamental factors.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

csomar
Technical analysis is very real. The fact that it's abused by scammers mostly targeting retail doesn't make it astrology. I don't disagree with your third point though since most of the TA stuff is available freely online.
pillefitz
Technical indicators are the bread and butter of professional traders.
marcofiset
Of which the vast majority cannot consistently beat index funds.
zscoops
Someone suggested adding a comparison to the backtest results, showing the profit and loss from buying and holding the asset versus the profit and loss from the user-defined strategy. I think this is really interesting to see.

Unfortunately, I don't have data on the performance of professional traders, so I can't say whether most of them beat index funds. If you have any sources, I would love to see them.

throwaway211
Clearly their tools are not good enough. /s

Prices are made by humans, including the edge case of automation where instructions are still human.

On average not beating an average where there are transaction and membership fees is therefore expected, it could not be any other way. That doesn't however make the index the best predictor of itself.

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downrightmike
Drawing imaginary lines on charts with crayons for dummies? TA seems to mostly be astrology for finance.
metabro
The post isn’t asking our opinions of TA but rather for those that use TA to provide feedback. There’s obviously a market and this provides a product for that market similar to creating an app for astrologers.
al_borland
The thing that makes technical analysis work is that other people are also using it. If a bunch of people/machines that make trade decisions see that a stock has some resistance at 115, because it's bounced off it several times before, they are more likely to anticipate that happening again and act accordingly. Since everyone does that, the predicted action happens. Then eventually there are other things that happen that drive it past that point, and people move on to the next set of signals.

If enough people believe it's true, it becomes true.

I don't use it currently, but I dabbled with it when I was younger (not as the only thing I looked at).

lulznews
Dumb people are the best customers.
Gooblebrai
The big difference as others pointed out if that regardless of how many people believe in astrology, nature will do whatever it wants.

Financial markets, to a certain extent, can be manipulated by people. If enough of them believe that when the face of Jesus appears in the chart they need to sell, the price will go down.

JojoFatsani
Are you looking for Quants?
zscoops
I assumed quants are already proficient in Python or R, so I didn't think they would be interested in a no-code solution. However, I'm open to feedback from anyone.
JSDevOps
Based on the project description, Definitely not.
akg_67
Try some of the subreddits related to investing and trading that might be inclined to use TA for example /r/Trading, /r/StocksAndTrading, /r/thewallstreet, /r/RealDayTrading, /r/DayTrading, /r/algotrading …
zscoops
Thanks! I wasn't aware of some of the subreddits you listed.
JSDevOps
How is this any different to things like https://www.tradingview.com/

I code quite a lot of trading algorithms. I’ll help you but I’m not willing to test your platform as is as I know my feedback will likely be quite critical.

zscoops
The idea was to focus on the logic of the strategy by letting the users create rules, from the values of indicators, prices, balance sheets or other parameters and optionally compare them using operators like greater, less, equal or check for crossovers, etc.

The users can create complex strategies by chaining these rules using AND/OR operators. It's not based on charts at all at the moment, just a form, and it seems like trading view is mostly charts with custom scripts.

JSDevOps
Ok so you want drag and drop trading?