>Why doesn't every hacker do this to make extra money?
I wondered the same thing and tried to answer it for myself not that long ago.
In short, it's hard, time-consuming, stressful and costly.
1) Your code has to work going forward. Coming up with something that works in backtesting is easy, doing it moving forward while staying within your risk envelope and considering all the associated costs is hard.
2) Closely related to #1. Whatever you put together is surely going to need plenty adaptation and oversight. It's a very fluid problem, you're just one player among countless others. How much time do you have in the day? Where is your capital coming from? For most people, the source of capital is a job that they probably can't ignore while fiddling with a trading program that would have to be remarkably successful to replace that income.
3) Everything costs money. You need a certain amount of capital to start with and there are all sorts of running costs. From the basic costs of execution, to market data and eventually co-location if you get that far. The fact that the OP kicked off with an amount that's essentially the barest minimum for any kind active trading is exceptional.
4) Can you maintain discipline and continue executing on all of the above while losing money? How many people struggle to simply get up on time, control their desire to check a particular website or to get over and move on from some frustration? Even if there's automation involved, trading will test your mental fortitude.
I wondered the same thing and tried to answer it for myself not that long ago.
In short, it's hard, time-consuming, stressful and costly.
1) Your code has to work going forward. Coming up with something that works in backtesting is easy, doing it moving forward while staying within your risk envelope and considering all the associated costs is hard.
2) Closely related to #1. Whatever you put together is surely going to need plenty adaptation and oversight. It's a very fluid problem, you're just one player among countless others. How much time do you have in the day? Where is your capital coming from? For most people, the source of capital is a job that they probably can't ignore while fiddling with a trading program that would have to be remarkably successful to replace that income.
3) Everything costs money. You need a certain amount of capital to start with and there are all sorts of running costs. From the basic costs of execution, to market data and eventually co-location if you get that far. The fact that the OP kicked off with an amount that's essentially the barest minimum for any kind active trading is exceptional.
4) Can you maintain discipline and continue executing on all of the above while losing money? How many people struggle to simply get up on time, control their desire to check a particular website or to get over and move on from some frustration? Even if there's automation involved, trading will test your mental fortitude.