VBA vs Python
I want to develop a systematic macro trading strategy that will trade with a time horizons of a few months. It will consist of importing economic indicators, perform some mathematical studies, and have trade recommendations as output. For now, visualizing output through GUI is optional. What matters is the trade recommendations as outputs and the ability to backtest the strategy on past data going back few decades. Intraday fluctuations plays a quasi non-existent role and some economic data would be updated on a weekly basis and monthly basis, so speed is not a concern. Having said all that, I want to learn programming to execute this project and I do not know which program should I pickup, VBA or Python? People with experience are free to comment. Thanks
Not a big programmer myself but would intuitively suggest Python. Lots of libraries and online shared knowledge especially for data science. Especially as new learner the amount of community resources available are a big advantage of Python
I second python. You could do the same with R, which I'm doing for my thesis. But python has more finance related libraries. VBA is commonly used at banks because everyone uses excel and it is difficult to introduce new technologies in legacy systems. Since you start from scratch that isn't a concern for you.
Here are some python libraries that might be of interest to you. There are many more.
Second this. R has a lot of trading libraries too though
I agree that Python is a better choice. Like lotsofhotwater said, It has more libraries readily available, And it's definitely easier to debug.
Along with learning the language, I'd recommend that you figure out, in detail, which datasets you'll use and how they will contribute to your strategy.
Python will be more capable. If in the future, an employer requires VBA. They’ll assume you can learn it because you already know python.
VBA is easy enough that you can learn it very quickly from Google should you ever need it.
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