James McKnight

I've been trading since 2005; currently have my own trading firm, more accurately a family office as all funds are my own. I rely heavily on algos as I've never been all that great at manual trading; so, with the assistance of a "datacenter" that's been installed at my home (3x 40-foot containers with server racks, mostly HP C7000 blade systems) I effectively just manage bots who trade for me. I'll make or download existing bots, test them like I would an employee who trades. If they do well the monetary allocation gets larger and larger, if it doesn't do well then it gets smaller, or the bot gets "fired".

The way I figure it doesn't matter if I hire actual employees or I just use bots to trade. My job doesn't really change, but I find it easier to use a bunch of servers and bots rather than a bunch of office space and people. I, obviously, still have people that do things like accounting, corporate paperwork, general assistance, etc. but I see little reason to sit at a computer while staring at a screen to trade.

Charts & Ideas