"Myth 5: You need advanced programming skills Truth 5: The definition of advanced is subjective. For what it’s worth, our students manage to code their first trading robot within the first few days. Myth 6: You need a high amount of capital and expensive infrastructure Truth 6: You need $0. We can start testing trading ideas with virtual money. The software/coding languages we use (MetaTrader 4 & 5, Python and VBA) are free. To start trading, you’ll usually just need a few hundred bucks to satisfy the minimum requirement of your trading model. Myth 7: I don’t need to learn how to code to be a good algorithmic trader. I can just get a freelancer to do it. Truth 7: Unless your freelancer is beside you 24 hours 7 days a week, relying on a freelancer to be a successful algorithmic trader is a very bad idea. Cost – It is expensive. It might seem cheap for the initial project, but every little change costs more money. Moreover, you need to be constantly developing new ideas. These monies add up. Effectiveness – The process is usually slow and miscommunications derail the project. This is especially prevalent as you might not be able to think from a coder’s point of view. Adaptiveness – You need to adapt and move faster as an algorithmic trader. Something that could be done in 10 seconds will take 3 days if you rely on a freelancer. Learning – You don't learn much when you outsource. Hiring a freelancer doesn’t help you improve on trading concepts/mindset. You won’t learn about your particular strategy or asset class, how to think quantitatively, or know what is possible or not in the algorithmic trading field. Your coding skills won’t improve too (duh!). However, there are some good points for hiring freelancers. You can hire them to design a basic strategy and use that as a template for further modifications. You can also ask freelancers for help for specific coding issues. I don’t know of any quantitative trader who cannot code. Myth 8: Being good at coding will mean you can code effective and profitable strategies Truth 8: Coding is a tool, it is how you use it that will decide how effective the strategy is. To use chess as an analogy, learning coding is akin to learning how each piece on the chess board moves. But that alone won't make you a chess master, you will need to understand strategies and how to adapt to your opponent. That's where all the trading concepts come in.