Disappointed that this made it to the front-page of HN. Had it show up in my push feed because it was so popular; quite upset to click it and see the comments in here falling for someone who's a crypto scammer:
- Redditor for 28 days; first post made to /r/investing and contained self-promotion for a website that functions as a search engine for stock market fundamentals (post removed by moderators, take a look using https://ceddit.com)
- Has made a few, low impression comments across other trading subreddits (/r/algotrading and /r/securityanalysis)
- Claims to have been a trader at "multiple Tier-1 US banks" for 7 years but a glance at their LinkedIn shows less than five and a half years (65 months) between two organizations
- Claims that they found, analyzed, and reproduced "130+" academic papers in only "7 months". Even by superhuman standards, the outlook for completing this much work (at high quality) is grim. Here's some napkin math:
7 months * 30 days = 210 days
16 hours (superhuman) * 210 days = 3,360 hours
3,360 hours / 130 papers to reproduce = 25.8hrs per paper
These numbers are intentionally rough to show that even if we're being generous, the idea that any one person could somehow recreate a full academic paper in less than two 16 hour working days is absurd. Add to this OP's claim of spending "weeks trying to reproduce [a paper's] results" and it the task becomes even more daunting.
This is possibly the biggest red flag of all -- or OP is the world's first (and only) 100x developer.
- Does not provide any empirical data to back their claims, only provides the name (not a link) of one paper, and when asked in comments to provide more information -- fails to deliver.
This post desperately wants to come off as a research article but it's missing all the fundamentals to make it so. If OP's claims were true, why wouldn't they post their raw findings? We could make that argument that there's far too much to post, 130 papers would be a good bit of code, but there's no reason that OP couldn't provide a listing of the papers they "reproduced" at the bare minimum.
OP has made extraordinary claims: most if not all "predicting the stock market" papers are fraudulent, but has failed to provide any supporting evidence to back this up beyond their own words. As someone who just analyzed well over a hundred papers and postures themselves as a data scientist, OP should know that citing yourself doesn't fly in this scenario.
- OP ends their post with the following: "I try to write a bit on medium even though I'm not a great writer if you wanted to read more from me."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with self-promotion, provided you're a quality creator and are transparent about what is being promoted. OP is neither of these things.
Clicking the Medium.com link will take you to a blog post titled "Crypto Trading Bots · A helpful guide for beginners [2019]". If you're like me, you might assume this is a tutorial related to crypto trading bots. Perhaps information on setting one up, coding one yourself, or an overview of the landscape. It is none of these things.
Much of the article explains how cryptocurrency trading bots work -- which is great, but quickly goes down the path of telling the reader that most bots are garbage and won't return a profit. Near the end of the post we're advised how to choose a viable trading bot and are provided with three questions to ask ourselves:
1. What is the professional experience level of the senior leaders of that firm?
2. Are their algorithms widely known and openly available to anyone?
3. Is their success aligned with your success?
Immediately after these questions are the following lines:
"Unfortunately, choosing a trading bot to go with isn’t as trivial as answering these three questions. In my opinion, everything ultimately comes down to people."
What people, you ask? Perhaps someone like OP, who happens to be the founder of a trading bot platform. The post finishes off with a not-so-subtle advert for his company, along with the extraordinary claim that it will "take full responsibility for the profitability of our clients". According to the OP, all you need to get rolling on his platform is "$1000" and "to press a single button to get the bots started", never mind that the platform hasn't launched and AFAIK there's no start button to press.
Clicking through to the platform's website will bring you to a scroll-jacked landing page full of marketing fluff. Scroll further down (or click the "Get Started" button) and you'll see a pricing table with only one option currently available: pre-order a "$145 single fee lifetime license". Compared to the two unavailable plans, $145 is a steal -- the next plan down would run you $660 ($55*12) a year. Combine this with the "First 90 days profitability or money back guarantee" and the whole damn thing sounds like an incredible deal. But you better act fast because this offer is only available to the "first 1000 members".
OP's other trading bot articles aren't much better and in my opinion, directly promote his platform.
~~~
The whole thing sets off numerous alarm bells in my head -- and it should for you too.
A trader who worked at "Tier 1 US banks" should know that guaranteeing the profits on your first 1,000 customers is not only ridiculous but so ambiguous as to be useless. Every developer on this site should know that not a single one of us would be remotely capable of maintaining a death-march level working pace for 7 months, launching a (credible) startup, followed by making non-zalgoized Reddit posts lacking any reference to the void.
OP isn't an OG superhuman developer who worked for a bunch of big banks and learned all the secrets. They're a former trader turned wantrepreneur that's resorted to dirty tactics to promote their venture. As far as I'm concerned, and maybe it's inflammatory, but OP is a liar. Nothing more.
- Redditor for 28 days; first post made to /r/investing and contained self-promotion for a website that functions as a search engine for stock market fundamentals (post removed by moderators, take a look using https://ceddit.com)
- Has made a few, low impression comments across other trading subreddits (/r/algotrading and /r/securityanalysis)
- Claims to have been a trader at "multiple Tier-1 US banks" for 7 years but a glance at their LinkedIn shows less than five and a half years (65 months) between two organizations
- Claims that they found, analyzed, and reproduced "130+" academic papers in only "7 months". Even by superhuman standards, the outlook for completing this much work (at high quality) is grim. Here's some napkin math:
7 months * 30 days = 210 days 16 hours (superhuman) * 210 days = 3,360 hours 3,360 hours / 130 papers to reproduce = 25.8hrs per paper
These numbers are intentionally rough to show that even if we're being generous, the idea that any one person could somehow recreate a full academic paper in less than two 16 hour working days is absurd. Add to this OP's claim of spending "weeks trying to reproduce [a paper's] results" and it the task becomes even more daunting.
This is possibly the biggest red flag of all -- or OP is the world's first (and only) 100x developer.
- Does not provide any empirical data to back their claims, only provides the name (not a link) of one paper, and when asked in comments to provide more information -- fails to deliver.
This post desperately wants to come off as a research article but it's missing all the fundamentals to make it so. If OP's claims were true, why wouldn't they post their raw findings? We could make that argument that there's far too much to post, 130 papers would be a good bit of code, but there's no reason that OP couldn't provide a listing of the papers they "reproduced" at the bare minimum.
OP has made extraordinary claims: most if not all "predicting the stock market" papers are fraudulent, but has failed to provide any supporting evidence to back this up beyond their own words. As someone who just analyzed well over a hundred papers and postures themselves as a data scientist, OP should know that citing yourself doesn't fly in this scenario.
- OP ends their post with the following: "I try to write a bit on medium even though I'm not a great writer if you wanted to read more from me."
There's absolutely nothing wrong with self-promotion, provided you're a quality creator and are transparent about what is being promoted. OP is neither of these things.
Clicking the Medium.com link will take you to a blog post titled "Crypto Trading Bots · A helpful guide for beginners [2019]". If you're like me, you might assume this is a tutorial related to crypto trading bots. Perhaps information on setting one up, coding one yourself, or an overview of the landscape. It is none of these things.
Much of the article explains how cryptocurrency trading bots work -- which is great, but quickly goes down the path of telling the reader that most bots are garbage and won't return a profit. Near the end of the post we're advised how to choose a viable trading bot and are provided with three questions to ask ourselves:
1. What is the professional experience level of the senior leaders of that firm? 2. Are their algorithms widely known and openly available to anyone? 3. Is their success aligned with your success?
Immediately after these questions are the following lines: "Unfortunately, choosing a trading bot to go with isn’t as trivial as answering these three questions. In my opinion, everything ultimately comes down to people."
What people, you ask? Perhaps someone like OP, who happens to be the founder of a trading bot platform. The post finishes off with a not-so-subtle advert for his company, along with the extraordinary claim that it will "take full responsibility for the profitability of our clients". According to the OP, all you need to get rolling on his platform is "$1000" and "to press a single button to get the bots started", never mind that the platform hasn't launched and AFAIK there's no start button to press.
Clicking through to the platform's website will bring you to a scroll-jacked landing page full of marketing fluff. Scroll further down (or click the "Get Started" button) and you'll see a pricing table with only one option currently available: pre-order a "$145 single fee lifetime license". Compared to the two unavailable plans, $145 is a steal -- the next plan down would run you $660 ($55*12) a year. Combine this with the "First 90 days profitability or money back guarantee" and the whole damn thing sounds like an incredible deal. But you better act fast because this offer is only available to the "first 1000 members".
OP's other trading bot articles aren't much better and in my opinion, directly promote his platform.
~~~
The whole thing sets off numerous alarm bells in my head -- and it should for you too.
A trader who worked at "Tier 1 US banks" should know that guaranteeing the profits on your first 1,000 customers is not only ridiculous but so ambiguous as to be useless. Every developer on this site should know that not a single one of us would be remotely capable of maintaining a death-march level working pace for 7 months, launching a (credible) startup, followed by making non-zalgoized Reddit posts lacking any reference to the void.
OP isn't an OG superhuman developer who worked for a bunch of big banks and learned all the secrets. They're a former trader turned wantrepreneur that's resorted to dirty tactics to promote their venture. As far as I'm concerned, and maybe it's inflammatory, but OP is a liar. Nothing more.