Zdenek Zanka

Today’s article got a little “tabloid” title, because I have started the speed testing and I did not know how it will end up.       On Friday, August 10, 2018, we released a new version of StrategyQuant – build 108 (downloadable for full license owners HERE), where we managed to significantly increase the […]

Today, I have an interesting topic for you, and the topic is artificial intelligence. The article will be a little longer, so I’ll split it into more parts:     Introduction What is artificial intelligence and what we can imagine under this name What, on the contrary, is not artificial intelligence How does artificial intelligence […]

In this article I have two news for you – one bad and one good. Let’s start the bad one. StrategyQuant 4 development has finished. Probably a shock, huh? But do not worry, it’s not that serious :).       StrategyQuant 4 is dead, long live StrategyQuant X! Experienced computer users already know where […]

Some time ago I wrote an article about 4 methods of building automated trading strategies. Today, I will look at this topic from a different perspective and I will tell you what steps you need to follow to make your automated trading successful. Automated trading systems (ATS) are also suitable for beginners, but you must […]

Imagine software where you can download data just with a few  clicks  of mouse and use them for backtests without any programming needs. Or let a software to search for the strategies automatically. That’s exactly how we made the new StrategyQuant. On Friday 1.6. we released the next version of StrategyQuant 4. The work is now […]

In today’s article, I want to share with you the results of several tests. In the last article, I introduced the new features of StrategyQuant 4, which we have been working on for quite some time. One reason is that we have significantly optimized the backtest process itself. Not just parallelization, ie the ability to […]

I decided to write an article about the new version of the StrategyQuant, which is now close to be released. How does the new version look, how was the development, and what will you find inside? Let´s take it step by step.   Development of StrategyQuant 4 The work on SQ4 has begun for our […]

I have to admit that last few weeks were very hectic. Lecture on the Money Expo, the release of our book … I did not even manage to write an article last week. It’s time to catch up and start writing again good articles both on professional and business level. This week I decided to […]

Or not? I did not want to write this article right after the information have been publish, but I wanted to let the emotions cool down and so I am writing my article with certain delay. I will not discuss in details on what ESMA has announced, since most of you know it. In my […]

In the previous articles, I have showed you the results of the automated strategy that has been running on real account for 21 months and we went through its historical backtests as well. I have mentioned at the end one important thing – the backtest itself is not enough. Why? What does it mean? And […]

In the last article, I showed you the results of a strategy that has been making profit for 21 months. As I have promised, we look at it in details- how it was created, tested, what are its historical results … Let’s go through part of it today.   Strategy Results As I have mentioned […]

I had been receiving questions about whether to invest in Bitcoins in the last month. Many people also have asked what I think about new cryptocurrencies. I am answering that I honestly do not know because I do not follow ICO (Initial Coin Offering). In general, I perceive them as extremely risky because we cannot see […]

I prepared for you the description of the strategy that has been successfully running over the last 21 months on real forex account. I will show how it looks, how it trades, what are its profits, and what distinguishes it from strategies that are not profitable. Risk management In general, I trade strategies with a […]

It’s been 12 years since I first get to the stock exchange. This year, I have celebrated my 31st birthday, and I can say that I do trading my entire life. As soon as I left high school, I got to the markets and stayed with them. With my trading, I have gone through many […]

Today I have prepared an interview with Jakub Bezděkovský. Jakub has graduated from the University of Economics, he has been trading for over ten years, and during his studies, he made vocational certificate as a chef just to have a fun and went to cook for six months in London. When it comes to trading, […]

I spent last week in Hong Kong at the iFX expo conference. It is one of the largest conferences in the world focused on B2B sector. Therefore, it was not meant for retail traders but for the company owners from the given sector. This brings one major advantage – you see the development of the […]

Do you know what is the confirmation bias? Each of us has witnessed it at least several time during our lives.     What is the information bias? It simply means that we tend to prefer information that confirms our own opinion. Typically, it is happening during the elections. For example, there were many people […]

It’s been a few months since I went to Cyprus with my colleague. We were visiting Roboforex brokerage and the owner took us around Cyprus and showed us the headquarters of different brokers. So, you have a unique opportunity to see how does Cyprus actually looks when it comes to forex brokers. It’s a real […]

In today’s article, I want to be kind of a “rebel” and leave my favorite area of automated trading. Today I want to focus on EUR/USD from a discretionary perspective. I will focus on the daily chart and the medium-term trend. On my Facebook (I will be pleased if you add me), I have recently […]

January is here. The year 2017 has just finished and we are the beginning of 2018. This year will be the breaking one and I’m very curious what it will bring us. I was off during Christmas, so our blog had a shorter break as well. This year, we are celebrating ten years since the […]

This Christmas wish will be a little bit different because each of us wants to wish you something, so everyone comes with his own message for the Christmas holidays.   There are many of us, so let´s start…   Zdeněk Zaňka, Algotrader, and Quastic CEO   Jan Kaška, Chief Investment Strategist, Charles Bridge GMF   […]

I am quite often going to the foreign conferences. It is always interesting to see other traders as well as the mentality which is different from the Czech one. European mentality differs from the Asian one and it is reflected also in the trading approach. This spring we had been to a conference in China, […]

In the previous nine works, we have gone through the wider fundamentals of the automated strategies development, and today we will discuss how to proceed further. How to reach your goal and how to achieve success. Automated trading has one huge advantage – it is much less demanding for a psyche, which is a real […]

Even beginning investors know that the basic lesson of stock trading is: diversification. It means that I do not buy just one title, but I buy more of them – and I am creating a portfolio. Forex and futures traders do not usually keep this rule. And that’s a mistake. Let me tell you today […]

In the last article, we have talked about 3 steps that are important for building quality strategies. In the next articles, we will have a look at them in details, and today we will start with the data. What kind of data do we need? Why are the MT4 data not the best choice and […]

In the previous articles, we have been talking about what are automated strategies, whether this method is also suitable for beginners, about the methods for building strategies, how the automated strategy works, and in the last article we have looked at the achievable results and goals. Today we will move towards the practice and we […]

Whether we are trading or doing other business, it is important to set our goals. If we do not have target, we don´t know where we are going and we can hardly get there. Setting goals has one more important aspect – it must be real. I have experienced a lot of people who set […]

Dear friends, If you know me a bit, you know that I have a negative attitude towards signal providers. They usually offer impossible profits in tens of per cent per month, and then it ends. However, there are always exceptions. Today, I have prepared an interview with a friend of mine who has been involved […]

It’s been a few months since we have launched the Quastic project, and I have realized that I did not write anything about why it has actually started, what are our goals, what do we plan, etc. But today I hope to make it all clear.     When the Quastic idea was born? As […]

After a short holiday break, I am back with another part of my series. You ready? In the previous article, we were talking about building automated strategies. Today we will go more into the depth and I will describe two basic building technologies. But let’s start by repeating what it is, and what is not […]

Those who are following my posts probably noticed that I have skipped two Mondays and I haven’t been writing for that time. Do not worry, I did not forget about you, I just took my planned holiday. I have my wife and son, his name is Thomas and he’s 15 months old. I have decided […]

In today’s article, I am going to show you four ways how to build automated trading strategies, some of them are suitable also for nonprogrammers and beginners. We will analyze the advantages and disadvantages and I will add my own perspective and experience.       What are the methods for building strategies? In principle, […]

“I’m a beginner, automated trading is probably not suitable for me”. This is something I hear quite often. Is it actually true? Is automated trading also suitable for beginners? As we have said in the previous article, automated trading has lot of advantages – it does not make mistakes, it is more comfortable from the […]

Good afternoon friends, I have been writing articles for a long time, but since I have often questions from the beginners about what exactly the automated trading systems are, what are the advantages and disadvantages, etc. I have realized that I have not done specific series for beginners yet, so it’s time to fix it. […]

What kind of conference it was? And what is Fintech? Let’s look at it.       On August 28, at the Slavia Hotel in Brno, was more less in silence held an event that I call revolutionary. The event was a Fintech conference, organized by the CTIT Technology platform, and I was one of […]

I´ve got a question recently: “Mr Zdenek, I have got no experience with automated trading yet. Howeve, I guess automated strategy is going to be profitable only for a few weeks”.   Actually it was not a question, it was the statement. And it´s clear, that the man has no knowledge, nor experience with automated […]

It has been already a few years ago when I have realized how crucial are trading sessions for scalping. Why? And how to work with them? Let’s have a look at it in our article. What are trading sessions? There are several trading centers around a globe and as the globe turns, the market is […]

In this article we will have a look at what affects the most our profits from scalping. This lesson will be more about practice and I’ll show you what to look after when developing scalping strategies.   We have to do it in a different way I am very strict in my strategy development and […]

I did not originally plan this article, but after a discussion I have decided to publish my results from the times when I had been doing scalping. So what can be achieved with scalping? First of all, I have to say here that by scalping we can achieve interesting profits, but it is very demanding […]

As I wrote in the previous article, I have decided to return to the scalping strategies. I have been intensively and successfully engaged in scalping years ago (in one of the articles I will share with you my results), but scalping strategies have their disadvantages, so I left them for a while. However queries are […]

I remembered the scalping strategy we had put together with my friend a few years ago. Its results are still very good and it works very well in the long term perspective. Take a look at our backtest (we have created it in 2013): In case you wouldn’t know it, we can consider as scalping […]

In the previous article we have been reviewing an interesting strategy for AUD/CAD, and at the end, I asked you to do homework – to suggest how to improve the strategy and how to get more profit out of it. At the beginning, I want to say that I did not want to hear the […]

…and to overcome the bad or too good periods :). There are times when you are doing very well and when you don´t. It is necessary not to fall into the euphoria when doing too well and not to panic when the markets do not behave as you want. I have 5 tips for you […]

We are in 2017 and technologies have advanced a lot in last 20 years, even from a trading point of view. It is already a long time since the algorithm trader was dependent on Excel files. Now there are ways how to work more efficiently. I remember how many years ago I have tested different […]

I have previously shared on my Facebook an interesting strategy for AUD/CAD, and since there were very positive reactions I have decided to write something more about it and at the end I have prepared homework for you. So please write your comments on Facebook and we will have a look at it next week […]

Today I have decided to write an article about the steps leading to the successful algorithm trading, which means to successful trading through robots. Although more it will be a list of “characteristics” that a trader should have or should have been willing to cultivate.   7 steps to success in (algo) trading   Be […]

There are two points how to see profit in trading (no matter if you are trading discretely or with the trading automats). Most of the less experienced traders are interested only in one of them, and the AOS sellers are abusing this. Let me show you how to avoid this trap. Profit based on closed […]

How many times have you asked this question? Tens of millions of people are trading on the stock market worldwide, and only 8% of them  are profiting on long-term basis. Are you among them? Or are you among those 92% of the others, who are feeding us, successful traders? If you belong to the 92%, […]

Have you ever heard about it? Probably not and I am not surprised as it is not well known method, despite the fact it is the method that is at least partially uses by every algorithm trader. Its testing does not even have to be demanding. Let’s look at it as it is good to […]

Finding a profitable strategy is not difficult, but that is not enough. Not only must be the strategy profitable, it must also bring the profit in the future. Step by step we will have a look on how to build trustable strategies. In the first part we will focus on OOS data, which means Out […]

Recently I have returned from Asia where I had a series of lectures together with my colleague and I would like to share my experience from Singapore with you. I wish it would have work in the same way also in the whole world :). The first seminar was held in Singapore. Approximately 60 people […]

One of the most anticipated event of this year, US presidential elections are behind us. So let’s have a look what it brought to us. Volatility Again it has shown that there is nothing sure in the markets. Trump should have been the worst candidate and he should not win at all, the propaganda around […]

What happened tonight is a massacre and painful thing for many traders. Originally I wanted to write about the conference in Italy, but this has full priority. Great Britain has decided to leave EU in June, and since then, GBP has been busy. It has weakened a lot, but it should not be over… Today […]

To become successful in trading, the discipline and mental skills are important, this is nothing new. But there is one more thing that will help you to boost your success up. It is not a secret that the best traders are people who have achieved success also in their professional life. It’s not about contacts, […]

It’s summer, the markets are ruled by boredom with just a few exceptions and volatility went on vacation to Hawaii or somewhere. When I look at ATR for EUR/USD, D1, I can see that exactly that the break came on first July and volatility fell from 0.015 to 0.0075, that means to 50%. Of course, […]