Zuo Zheng | Graduate in Economics from NYU | Investment Analyst

3 min read

Trading in the financial markets and its potential to make you profit has always been attractive to many. However, few realize the need to go digital to get more done in less time.

One such story is of Zheng, who from his schooling days has been attracted to the trading world and wanted to start trading using data and play with numbers to get it right. Find out how he made that happen.

Here’s our conversation with Zheng.

Tell us something about yourself: Your current work profile, your educational background.

Hi, I am Zheng, I have graduated from New York University with a bachelor degree in Economics. Currently, I am working as an investment analyst at Semir Group. I am looking to expand my knowledge of Automated trading to enter in the Quant domain, potential moving into the hedge fund industry. 

What motivated you to learn quantitative trading?

I have been interested in the financial markets since my school days. I used to be a manual trader, then I realized that having a strategy in place will earn me profit. But to do so, with speed, accuracy and discipline, I had to use the computers, that is when I decided to learn Quant trading.

Are you able to apply what you learned at work? How?

Yes, in fact, I am currently working on creating my own strategy in trading from what I have learned with QuantInsti.

I have had tremendous support from QuantInsti faculties, especially Ishan and the author the Short Selling course Mr Laurant Bernut

I would recommend QuantInsti to aspiring traders and quants since they provide practical and useful learning material and awesome support in solving queries. 

How was your experience with course Short Selling in Trading by Laurent Bernut?

The course by Laurent Bernut is fantastic, in my opinion, it's the best course in the industry not just for short selling, but for trading in general. The source code provided in the course is very insightful and the variation of the strategy was mind-blowing. I am using the learning from the course to make my own code.

Three things you will learn from this course that probably not available anywhere else:

  1. Calculating the regime on rebased series instead of the absolute series will make you head and shoulders above your competition.
  2. Being able to pick tops and bottoms is a skill that must be learned.
  3. Multiple time frame alignment is an old fairy tale in the retail trading space, professional traders extract profits by scaling in and scaling out.

Any message you would like to share with aspiring Algo traders and Quant traders?

  1. Focus on risk management and order execution. Being able to backtest strategies in the paper is good, but deploy it live requires more skills and more rigorous tests on risk management and live executions.
  2. Instead of working on the given templates in courses, I would suggest using those templates as a base to create new strategies or modify the existing strategies as per your requirement.
  3. Specifically for Algo traders or aspiring Algo traders: Being able to detect regimes in a robust and stable manner is the key to becoming a successful algo trader.

Quantra courses equip motivated learners gain and perfect skill set required to excel in the field of algorithmic trading. Quantra courses are self-paced bite-sized courses, a quick way to gain the skills you’ll need to create your own trading strategies using Python or excel. So you gain usable skills in a matter of hours.

Disclaimer: In order to assist individuals who are considering pursuing a career in algorithmic and quantitative trading, this case study has been collated based on the personal experiences of learners from QuantInsti®. Case studies are for illustrative purposes only and are not meant to be used for investment purposes. The results achieved post completion of any QuantInsti programme may not be uniform for all individuals.

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