Follow me on my journey to a full-fledged Apple ecosystem trading system.
Bullrun end of 2017
So end of 2017, by accident a few weeks before the bullrun began I made my first investment into cryptocurrencies. After doing a lot of research on the technology and what each of the then existing cryptos had to offer.
So I really got lucky that, I guess it was less than 2 weeks later, prices of all then popular cryptos started to rise. So I got hooked. And I also got spoiled, I was misled be HODL. Basically HODL means: do not sell, wait for life changing rewards.
How wrong this theory was!
Lost my job
A few years later, I had increased my crypto positions a lot by then, I lost my job and got stuck in that situation for over 2 years. But I needed something to work on, a task. So I spent some time starting to really trade my assets. And interestingly enough: I could increase the amount of assets in a more or less decent way. I figured: most of those popular cryptos suffer every now and then huge drops. While most people fear losing their investments I eventually realised: cool, now I can increase my position!
Quick detour
While most believe drops in price are a threat to their investment, I, unfortunately rather later than sooner, realised: indeed each of these situations can actually help increase your position. Let me quickly explain(don’t nail me on the “wrong” numbers, %, I use these “rounded” numbers to illustrate the truth):
Say you buy an asset at 10$, then it drops 15%. You should now get out, even more when you see it will drop more. Say you spent 1000$ on the asset when it was 10$, it dropped to 8.5$, you sell. you only get 850$ back. So yes, you realised a loss of 15%. If however price keeps dropping, say another 15% to 7$, you can then buy with the 850$ more of the asset than you had before. In fact if you buy at 7$ for 850$ you get 120 of the asset. That’s a whooping 20% more than you initially had. And that even though you temporarily had incurred a loss of 15%. Okay, admittedly, in terms of “real value” you are still at a loss. But let’s assume price rises again to 8.5. In that case you real value is already 1020. So you have already more than you initially had when you bought for a 1000$ at 10$. Let’s now assume price rises again to 10$, in that case you can see: You indeed made 20% profit. Had you not sold and bought at lower price, you right now only had like 0 profit. Had you followed the sell/buy approach you now have 20% more value.
Interesting thing about my trading experiences was: I was super nervous on my first trade, don’t remember, maybe 100$. Over time I increased my order sizes, lost my nervousness. My largest order was about a quarter of a million $, obviously my assets had in the meantime reached a good price.
Bot
And through all that trading experience I thought: how can I optimise? I don’t mean entry/exit, well at least not based on signals. Most analysts say: buy then sell then, but I never saw anyone who was like 100% right, not even 50% right.
I just stuck with the idea of “huge fast drop” many times presents an opportunity window to increase the position. So the idea of my bot was born.
The bot I programmed in Python. It was more or less successful, but not at the rate I imagined. So every now and then I resorted to manual trading, or semi-automatic trading: let my bot sell, and myself tried to find a good entry (or exit depending on perspective) myself.
And it was in these situations where I found: damn: when price drops like in almost % per minute… you have a hard time to adjust your orders to squeeze just that little bit more edge out of your trades.
So the idea of EdgeSqueezer was born.
A very crude but working HTML/Javascript prototype which allowed me to adjust an order in repeated steps by the same “difference”.
At that time yet, I would not know it would eventually be known for “EdgeSqueezer“.
Lost my Job again
As it happens I lost my job again. Was paid for about 4 months, but could leave instantly.
Again I was looking for something I could work with, a task.
That was the birthday of the idea of creating an iOS app which would offer this “EdgeSqueezer” functionality to more aficionados.
But where to start? It happens that, around this time, AI was integrated into Xcode, the IDE for Apple ecosystem development projects.
So I gave it a try and it helped me a lot to get to know the language, the structures, helped me with architectures, UX, basically everything where I still lacked knowledge.
And while I was developing the iOS part, enhanced with other, minor, functionality, it dawned on me: I could also create a cool macOS port of it. The base code was identical. Only UX needed some tweaking.
And here I am, having finished V1.0 of both ports, awaiting successful Apple Review for fellow traders to equally profit from EdgeSqueezer and Orderly, an idea which was born along the journey.
Orderly, as a matter of fact was first introduced in my trading bot. The bot up to then, would upon signal to sell, sell at market, thus walking the order book, crossing the spread. Introducing the Orderly mechanics the bot does not sell at market anymore, but as limit, best offer on your side.
And reality shows: it works even for those quarter of a million $ trades it, that mechanism, worked quite effectively, not once needing to resort to “fall back” to a market order anyway.