Double-checking

I've spent a week implementing cross-checks for the profits of my robot stock trader. If I would have used real cash in the last two weeks, this is (approximately) the performance I would expected to see:

The top curve shows what an ideal trade curve would look like if the bank didn't deduct any commission. The second highest reflects a 17% increase (50 kSEK ≈ 5.5 kUSD); using 10 kSEK ≈ 1.1 kUSD would have resulted in a 12% profit; and 1 kSEK ≈ 110 USD had resulted in a 43% loss.

The above view only looks at stock trading, but adding other instruments would only make the end-result even more sensitive to low amounts for two reasons. 1) The robot on average wants to buy and sell 48 instruments each day. 2) The commission for buying and selling non-stock instruments are a lot higher.

I don't know anything about stock trading yet, but I think that the stock part of a portfolio acts as a risk-mitigating cushion, since the value doesn't fluctuate much. Leverage certificates, on the other hand, can fluctuate massively. So keeping a small portion of high-risk instruments can give a fairly high yield, while at the same time causing very little risk with a constant commission. I just need to add calculations of other types of instruments+commissions and I can do a prognosis of where I might be in a few months time. That should be a piece of cake.

When that is completed there is only one thing remaining. Walk the walk. Having the robot execute the actual trade. I'll start small, loose a high percentage to commission. When things are flying, it's just to insert more cash. That should prove interesting. Probably a little too interesting for me, you know on that hard-to-sleep level of interesting. But taking it slow, double and triple checking things. When the time comes this baby is going to fly. Fuckin' high! :)