Getting Started with Algorithmic Trading!

Yes, you will be awarded with a certification from QuantInsti after successfully completing the online learning units.

No, there are no live or classroom sessions in the course. You can ask your queries on community and get responses from fellow learners and faculty members.

Yes, you can ask your queries related to the course on the community: https://quantra.quantinsti.com/community

Fast-speed internet connection and a browser application are required for this course. For best experience, use Chrome.

There is no admission criterion. You are recommended to go through the prerequisites section and be aware of skill sets gained and required to learn most from the course.

We respect your time, and hence, we offer concise but effective short-term courses created under professional guidance. We try to offer the most value within the shortest time. There are a few courses on Quantra which are free of cost. Please check the price of the course before enrolling in it. Once a purchase is made, we offer complete course content. For paid courses, we follow a 'no refund' policy.

Some of the course material is downloadable such as Python notebooks with strategy codes. We also guide you how to use these codes on your own system to practice further.

We focus on teaching these quantitative and machine learning techniques and how learners can use them for developing their own strategies. You may or may not be able to directly use them in your own system. Please do note that we are not advising or offering any trading/investment services. The strategies are used for learning & understanding purposes and we don't take any responsibility for the performance or any profit or losses that using these techniques results in.

Quantra environment is a zero-installation solution to get beginners to start off with coding in Python. While learning you won't have to download or install anything! However, if you wish to later implement the learning on your system, you can definitely do that. All the notebooks in the Quantra portal are available for download at the end of each course and they can be run in the local system just the same as they run in the portal. The user can modify/tweak/rework all such code files as per his need. We encourage you to implement different concepts learnt from different learning tracks into your trading strategy to make it more suited to the real-world scenario.

No. We provide you guidance on how to create strategy using different techniques and indicators, but no strategy is plug and play. A lot of effort is required to backtest any strategy, after which we fine-tune the strategy parameters and see the performance on paper trading before we finally implement the live execution of trades.

You can learn with or without coding knowledge. If you would like to do the analysis on excel, we would suggest you to start with course on Statistical Arbitrage in Trading. You can create and test your trading strategies using excel.

Alternatively, you can do the course on Python for Trading which will help you gain knowledge in all these fields: Python, Analysis and Financial markets.

Lifetime access means that once you enroll in the course, you will have unlimited access to all course materials, including videos, resources, readings, and other learning materials for as long as the course remains available online. There are no time limits or expiration dates on your access, allowing you to learn at your own pace and revisit the content whenever you need it, even after you've completed the course. It's important to note that "lifetime" refers to the lifetime of the course itself—if the platform or course is discontinued for any reason, we will inform you in advance. This will allow you enough time to download or access any course materials you need for future use.

Colocation is the facility which allows the High-Frequency Trading (HFT) firms (firms using computer programs for executing trade orders in fractions of a second) and proprietary traders to locate the computers in the same premises where an exchange’s computer servers are placed. It is a highly beneficial service to the trading firms since it provides them with access to stock prices a split nanosecond earlier than the rest of the investors. This way these firms and proprietary traders can be a step ahead in making the decision to trade as compared to the rest of the market.

Algorithmic trading is a system of trading which facilitates trading decision making in the financial markets by using advanced mathematics, stats, computer programming as its tools. In simple words, algorithmic trading means providing a defined set of instructions (strategy) in the form of algorithms to place and execute trading orders. Moreover, these algorithms break down the large orders into smaller sizes for executing each at different times in order to achieve better profits.

High-Frequency Trading (HFT) is a trading practice in the stock market for placing and executing many trade orders in a microsecond. Technically speaking, HFT uses complex algorithms for analysing multiple markets and executing trade orders in the most profitable time. Also, HFT leads to high turnover rates and order-to-trade ratios.

Quantitative trading is the trading practice which consists of trading strategies formulated on the basis of quantitative analysis. Here, Quantitative analysis is the type of analysis which is based on mathematical and statistical modelling. And, that is why price and volume are the two most common variables used in this type of trading.

An algorithmic trading platform is the one with three basic components within it. First, receiving data from the exchange, second, processing or analysing data, and third, placing orders in the exchange.
There are three main parts with which the algorithmic trading platform operates:

• Market Data Adapter (MDA) - Market Data Adaptor is used to receive data from an exchange or vendor and convert it to the format that the trading system can understand.
• Complex Events Processing (CEP) - CEP is the brain of the system. The main strategy lies here. This is where the incoming market data is analysed, and the trading algorithm generates a trading order.
• Order Routing/Management System (OMS) - Routing means directing the traffic in a certain direction in a network. In this case, Order Routing refers to directing orders received from the CEP engine to the desired exchange or trading destination/broker after processing them.