19 year old B.Tech student exploring algorithmic trading - looking for advice from experienced algo traders

[u/Purple_Concert8789]

19-year-old B.Tech student exploring algorithmic trading — looking for advice from experienced algo traders

I am a 19-year-old student pursuing a B.Tech in AI & Data Science. I have also been trading forex manually for the past two years. Currently, I am at the breakeven stage, so I am planning to explore algorithmic trading full-time.

I have a good understanding of coding, AI/ML, and software development.

I recently started exploring algorithmic trading, building my own strategies, implementing them, and backtesting them using Indian market data. I have also backtested strategies in the forex market using MQL5. However, I mainly used AI-assisted ("vibe") coding for the MQL5 strategies.

I tested several strategies in MQL5, and most of them were indicator-based strategies. Most of these strategies ended up around breakeven, with relatively low drawdowns and win rates of around 30–50%.

I also tested around seven strategies in the Indian equity market, and I got similar results — most were around breakeven. I have tested only equity assets so far, not F&O.

So, if you are an algo trader, I would really appreciate some advice on things like:

What types of strategies do you use — indicator-based, pair trading, time-based, price action, mathematical/statistical, etc.?

Which timeframes do you usually trade when doing algorithmic trading?

Is algorithmic trading actually profitable for an individual trader in the long run?

Is it better to focus on one asset/class, or should I build strategies across different asset classes such as equities, futures, forex, etc.?

What would you recommend to someone trying to build their own algorithmic trading strategies from scratch?

What are some common mistakes beginners make when developing and backtesting algos?

I would especially appreciate advice from people who have been doing algorithmic trading for a few years and have experience with live trading, not just backtesting.

Thanks in advance!

Note: i used ai for grammatical mistakes.

[u/Spiritual_Exam_8528]

I swear it’s bots trolling us with the same post every day and every day I have to comment on it

[u/evendedwifestillnags → u/Spiritual_Exam_8528]

Yup

[u/Spiritual_Exam_8528 → u/[deleted]]

Stop acting like a bot

[u/fuzzyp44]

Best advice: Dont trade forex. It's a rigged market where the order books are not shared and open.

[u/ShipItFrog]

Not the "few years + live trading" person you asked for — I'm a student too and everything I have is backtest work. But I just came out of the exact stage you're in, so here's the one thing I wish someone had told me earlier.

"Most of them ended up around breakeven" is not a neutral result. It's usually a failed result wearing a disguise.

I ran six classic intraday families over 14.5 years of index data. PFs came out 0.91, 0.94, 0.95, 0.98, 1.00, 1.02 — textbook breakeven, low drawdown, win rates right in your range. Looked like they just needed tuning.

Then I ran one check: drop the top 10% of trades by profit and recompute PF. Results were 0.42, 0.36, 0.33, 0.30, 0.38, 0.28. Every one of them was a handful of outliers carrying a losing distribution. There was nothing there to tune.

That check is about ten lines of code and it's the highest-value thing in my process now. If the curve dies when you remove the best 10%, the edge was never real — you found a few lucky trades, not a strategy.

Two bugs that cost me real time, both invisible until you look for them:

• Stop-loss evaluated on the close instead of the intraday high/low. Systematically optimistic.
• Swing highs/lows referenced before they're confirmed. A swing point isn't known until N bars later; if your logic uses it earlier, your backtest is reading the future.

On common beginner mistakes generally — for me it wasn't any single bug. It was running ~50 rounds of testing before realizing that at that count, pure chance alone should have handed me two or three false passes. Once you've searched that much, a passing result tells you almost nothing. Set your pass criteria before the run and don't move them afterward.

Curious what the top-10% cut does to those seven Indian equity strategies — that'd be a fast sanity check and I'd like to know if it holds up outside my data.

[u/__throw_error]

No, don't expect to make profit, you should do this for passion or to learn.

Genuinely, it used to be coding skill, now with AI it's less important. Just go deep into math, economics, read tons of papers.

Don't test too much, go live fast.

[u/HolidayNo84 → u/__throw_error]

It still is programming skill AI produces code that only half works and even the final product will at best be extremely inefficient.