From intuition to algorithmic trading

Here, we will discuss how trading ideas are born and how they are turned into algorithmic trading strategies. Fundamentally, all trading ideas are driven by human intuition to a large extent. If markets have been moving up/down all the time, you might intuitively think that it will continue to move in the same direction, which is the fundamental idea behind trend-following strategies. Conversely, you might argue that if prices have moved up/down a lot, it is mispriced and likely to move in the opposite direction, which is the fundamental idea behind mean reversion strategies. Intuitively, you may also reason that instruments that are very similar to one another, or loosely dependent on one another, will move together, which is the idea behind correlation-based trading or pairs trading. Since every market participant has their own view of the...