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Ask HN: What is something I should and can be automating right now?
12 points by zuttton 2800 days ago
3 comments

I would pay a lot of money for a stock trading bot that just generates $200 a month or etc if I just deposit $2000 into a brokerage and let the little bot do its thing.

I was running a decently profitable scalping operation but the time invested made it silly to continue. However, I could really use the $200 in monthly income, and I'm not too afraid to lose the $2000 principal investment if the bot is coded well.

The other option is a video poker bot, which is already freely available. The issue of course is getting it past the casino :)

I, too, would like a bot that generated 213% annualized compound returns.
It's sustainable with small numbers.

That is to say, 213% gains from trading $2000 on JNUG/JDST is a lot more feasible than 213% gains on $75,000,000 USD worth of AMZN calls

Agree that it is far more likely to do that with small numbers rather than big numbers. But that is something entirely different than finding a sustainable scheme giving 10% per month returns.

Sustainable should mean that 500 readers of HN each individually managing their little $2000 nest egg ($1 million aggregate) making independent decisions should be able to collectively be sitting on $3.13 million after a year.

You don't get sustainable 213% returns without a commensurate, sustainable level of risk to go with it. But if you're able to do it sustainably with 3x ETFs, congratulations.

Why do you say that? Yes, $75M poses liquidity issues, but that doesn't mean that a smaller amount is easier. I'd wager that a smaller portfolio is harder because you can't diversify to mitigate your risk.
It's really hard to find 75m worth of buyers. You can't buy and sell as freely as you please, like you said, because of liquidity.

I can buy JDST at 9am for $60 and sell at 9:45am for $60.60. On a balance of $2000, this is an easy $20 for basically no risk, imo.

That's pretty cool that it never goes down and you don't ever buy at $60 and sell at $59.40.
How much time did you invest?
At least several hours per day in a lot of nebulous work. Looking at news, looking at technical analysis, it's a pain :)

Actually placing trade orders and closing orders is only a few minutes of work and a lot of waiting/thinking, like chess!

Congrats then. You surely have more patience that me but also, to learn something like that I would not know were to start.
No worries! Honestly it's a bit of a random walk more than anything but the single most important statistic is the RSI of a specific stock, because stocks tend to return to the average after a large move.
Groceries! We don't have to go to the store anymore with Walmart + Kroger adding the ability to pick out your groceries online. You pay on the app, and an employee fetches the items, bags them, and has them ready for pick up at the time you specify.

It actually saves money because you're not buying things that you happen to see, and only getting what you need.

DNS deployment - see Infrastructure as Code.