Python for Traders

Recruiting S&T from non-target school… was wondering if I could get some input from people who use Python regularly on their desk.

What’s your main use for Python? Automating Excel spreadsheet manipulation by combining with VBA? Data cleansing? What IDE do you use/ what is common on the street? What libraries do you most commonly use?

Another other info/ suggestions for someone trying to learn would be great.

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Python is a programming language, so basically you can create everything from scratch.

Of course depends on your needs, but if you will became a master in python, You can definitely say goodbye to the prehistoric Excel and VBA

Python is very common programming language in finance because is a very fast to write and there are many libraries to use.

IDE:

 - VSCode (the best and ready to use. I use this for better integrations with Microsoft Azure and Cloud Computing)

-  ATOM (but i suggest to use the first one. Basically is the same of VScode)

- PyCharm is a good alternative

Library must to now:

  • Pandas, Numpy, Matplotlib, Seaborn (for Dataset manipulation and visualization)
  • Scikit-Learn, Theano, TensorFlow, Keras and PyTorch, Gym for machine learning modeling and forecasting

Python For Traders:

For trading this is a big topic, basically traders have already software with licence like Bloomberg, Murex, Kondor, FIS where basically you can do everything.

Python is free and open source programming language, so is very useful for implementing new trading strategy from zero and do some integrations on those systems mentioned before. I would say that Python is a great programming language for back testing and design strategies and data analysis, but if you want "trade" with python then your have to develop something like APIs to use them on the market or in alternatives you should use some software that allows use python envs.

One of most important consideration: Python is a programming language so for cyber security reason you should work on a VM (virtual machine) 

Hope it helps.

Best, 

A.

 

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