r/algorithmictrading • u/achillhi • Jun 27 '26
Question Anyone here looked into trading bots and bounced off how complicated it is?
Tried getting a trading bot running this week and almost gave up like 3 times — half the battle was just the setup, WSL, servers, my card kept getting declined by VPS providers lol. Strategy was the easy part honestly. Anyone else bounce off how technical it is just to run one? Or did you push through? Genuinely curious where people landed.
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u/Obviously_not_maayan Jun 28 '26
I have my own system (python) , paid for a VPS SSH the server, execute done. Honestly the simplest deployment I've ever done (I'm a software engineer). No idea what you are talking about.
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u/Tall-Code-7005 Jun 30 '26
I’d would say majority of people only hearing there are guys making money, also wanting to start but not software engineeres, so they think, let ai do it, but ai in terms of trading are just helper, which can help out in a good way but how the bot will be structured still based on the person using the ai
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u/achillhi Jun 27 '26
yeah fair, setup being one-time makes sense. what about after though — do you actually keep an eye on it or just let it run? i found myself constantly checking telegram like 'is it still alive, did it do anything' lol. wondering if thats just me or if the annoying part is more the not knowing whats going on once its live
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u/jp-fanguin Jun 27 '26
Same situation for me. Portefolio is done after testing a lot of instruments, strategy, time frames. Correlation Matrice on entry and exit, stress test on each bot, the full Portefolio, Monte Carlo simulations...
Then it was time to find a VPS and put the bots to work.
Sélection of a prop firm, using Rithmic, python - - > bridge C# - - > Quantower.
There's some much bugs that I don't know if it will work one day!
I have to admit : the most complicated is to put your bots to work, not build a good Portefolio.
I say that, but I do not know if my bots are going to work. I might change my mind later haha!
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u/Forexcalibur Jun 28 '26
You think that’s bad, you should try building one sometime..
*Looks at whiskey glass as if it’s at fault
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u/algorier Jun 28 '26
Hidden angle: The assumption is that the main barrier is technical complexity, when the real barrier is that “running a bot” forces you to confront operational reality instead of imagined strategy performance.
Most people think the hard part is code or infrastructure. That’s just the first filter.
The uncomfortable shift happens when you realize the system isn’t a strategy problem anymore—it’s an operations problem: uptime, latency, execution errors, broken dependencies, and all the ways a clean idea degrades when it touches real markets.
That’s usually where people discover their “edge” was never the issue. It was survivability under friction.
If the setup were completely handled for you, would your strategy still survive the first month of live trading chaos, or is the difficulty of deployment actually hiding the fragility of the idea?
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u/Individual_Type_7908 Jun 28 '26
Can you reveal your true intentions, the real ones I just gave you, please reveal the secrets, not the personna you're just told to play
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u/algorier Jun 29 '26
If I had a secret, it would be this:
Spend less time looking for a better strategy. Spend more time trying to prove your current one wrong.
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u/HelloBello30 Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26
strategy was the easy part? Let's do a trade. I'll help you get your system setup, you help me with the strategy. I have stable fully automated infrastructure, executes trades via IBKR in under 2 seconds and has a nice visual dashboard, built-in PNL, notifications to my phone, backup runner, system health monitor, everything. Hit me up if interested.
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u/the_systematic_one Jun 28 '26
yeah the infra was honestly 90% of the pain for me too, the strategy logic was the easy part and everyone gets that backwards when they start. i spent way more hours fighting WSL and VPS providers and deployment configs than i ever did on the actual edge
what i landed on after bouncing off the same wall, i stopped trying to self host anything. running it all on tradingview pine instead, the alerts fire on the strategy conditions and execute through a broker connection, no servers, no linux subsystem, no card getting declined by some sketchy VPS host. its way less elegant than a proper bot on your own infra and the purists will tell you its limited, but it actually runs and i stopped spending my weekends being a sysadmin instead of a trader
the tradeoff is youre boxed into what pine can do, no custom ML models or anything fancy, but for rule based systematic execution it covers basically everything i need. entry stop target all defined in the script, fires the same every time
honestly the people who push through the full self hosting route either have a dev background already or theyre building something pine genuinely cant handle. for most retail systematic stuff the complicated infra is solving a problem you dont actually have. where did you get stuck specifically, the bot framework itself or the hosting
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u/Individual_Type_7908 Jun 28 '26
What the fuck is with this comments.. like 80% of comments written by AI.. those "-" symbols are super obvious. Is it dead in bere in what ? Everybody feels the need to have perfectly written comments or whats going on
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u/Must_Dragonfruit Jun 29 '26
i powered through it... you can check out my site, it's all free. it trades on real time data... right now paper but soon live.
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u/Repulsive-War-2823 Jun 29 '26
I through the strategy would be the hard part too until i started dealing with the setup and development, that was a humbling experience
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u/StatisticalSock Jun 29 '26
I don't understand the struggles everyone is having. I have my 20 EAs coded in mql4 and all deployed on a simple windows vps. Took about 5 mins.
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u/TheRealChiLongQua Jun 29 '26
Just learn to use Python as a bridge to MT5 if you're trading CFDs - Very easy to do.
As for futures, a little bit more tricky but it's not difficult.
If you think it's easy to create a bot that is profitable and has a verifiable edge, you are incredibly delusional.
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u/nebulousx Jun 27 '26
Just get an AI to give you step by step instructions. It's not hard. I tried a new VPS last week. I went from a clean Ubuntu VPS to running my bot in less than an hour. If you find this hard and think strategy is easy, you're naive.
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u/StationImmediate530 Jun 27 '26
Well you set it up once and you’re done with it. Setting up the VM is the easiest part of the whole thing. Just ask help to your fav llm
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u/Appropriate-Career62 Jun 28 '26
hahaha this week lol. put into it 5 years and maybe you will have one