Back from the Hack

My apologies for any “404 error” you may have gotten recently when trying to navigate my website. The site was hacked by malware. I don’t know if it was down for days, for weeks, or for months. I subscribed to a security package and have been told that everything is now restored.

2022 has been a tough time for trading: my most difficult since beginning full-time in [and including] 2008. This year has left me staggered and raw. It’s attacked my positivity and hope. I will blog more about this in coming posts.

Despite the hit, I’m not ready to give up yet. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is never a good idea and to that end, I still have work to do.

The Python backtester is on life support. You will continue to see posts on Python work I did earlier this year. For me, the dagger was realization that the data and corresponding results were irrevocably compromised.

While I haven’t practiced Python for several months, the next time I revisit will be my fourth “tour of duty.” I got farther the second time in 2020 than I did the first (2019). The third (2021-2022) was mostly practical application in working with the backtester. Hopefully the fourth comes easier and allows me to reach greater depths. Backtester aside, I have other projects in mind for which programming may be useful. Stay tuned for additional blog posts in the Python category.

Thankfully, some new automated backtesters have come onto the market. I have taken a good look at Option Omega, which has many appealing features. I also recently learned about MesoSim, which may be more tailored to my kind of trading.

I’m not really sure whether subscribing to one of these services solves the data issue. It’s at least likely to hide data flaws because close scrutiny of the backtrade log will be required. Making matters worse, some automated backtesters don’t provide such a log with essential data like entry and exit prices. This would allow for verification especially when trade results are highly discrepant from anything seen in ONE where the complete option chain is on display.

Either way, I have not entirely given up on backtesting and still have option strategies I’d like to study with an automated product. I will blog about this in the near future.

Something I have discovered in the past several months is BetterInvesting, which focuses on technamental [see Take Stock by Ellis Traub (2010)] analysis of stocks. Most important to me in this pursuit would be a repeatable process, which BetterInvesting provides. I don’t care so much what the process is because testing/validating the process would require [backtesting] tools that I’m not even sure exist. Regardless, you can expect some future blog posts in this area under the new category tag “BetterInvesting.”