Algo traders are making hay in India as well
Algo trading appears to be relatively easy to master given the presence of Algo companies like Tradetron, SquareOff.bot, AlgoMaker etc which offer ready-made solutions to intrepid traders.
A corporate trader named BSEL INFRASTRUCTURE REALTY LIMITED was in the news recently for reporting verified annual profit of Rs 32 crore on capital of Rs 30 crore, which is a RoI of more than 100% (see (Algo trader has earned profit of Rs 32 crore in 12 months on capital of Rs 30 crore which is a return in excess of 100%).
The trader candidly admitted that all of its trades are the result of algorithmic trading through Tradetron.
It is also a fact that algo experts are in great demand globally.
A leading firm named Jane Street Capital hired fresh IIT graduates on an annual salary of Rs 4 crore to write code and develop trading strategies. Not surprisingly, many of their star traders are Indians.
The entire concept of Algo trading and how retail investors can also embrace it has been explained in a simple manner by an expert named Vivek Gadodia in a F2F with Vivek Bajaj.
Another expert named CA Akshatha Udupa has explained the benefits of systematic trading and provided a precise tutorial on how we can create a short straddle on Tradetron without knowing even a word of coding.
Trader Alex Gerko has amassed fortune of $6 Billion at the age of 43
According to an article in Bloomberg, a 43 year old trader named Alex Gerko is the founder of a quantitative trading firm named XTX Markets. This company is based in London and handles almost $300 billion in daily volume across equities, commodities, currency and fixed income.
The firm paid out a dividend of almost £1.3 billion ($1.6 billion) in March — more than triple the amount from a year earlier, according to accounts filed with Companies House.
Gerko is a doctorate in mathematics from Moscow State University and an expert in algorithmic analysis. He began his career trading equities at Deutsche Bank AG and later shifted to foreign exchange. He left in 2009 to join hedge fund GSA Capital before starting XTX.
Bloomberg confirmed that he holds 75% of XTX and has a networth of $6 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
XTX’s secret formula is that it does not do any discretionary trades. Instead, it automates as many processes as possible while using statistical models that analyze “trillions of noisy observations” of data for trading.
It also appears that the company uses “order flow” which gives traders an insight into the flow of orders and allows to position themselves in the direction of the flow.
Other Algo traders are also raking in big money. Citadel Securities, a market-making firm founded by Ken Griffin, hauled in a record $4.2 billion in net trading revenue in the first-half of 2022, up 23% from a year earlier. Citadel Securities, which competes with XTX, was valued at about $22 billion in a January funding round, Bloomberg stated.
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