Frequently Asked Questions

Robot Wealth started as a blog and an online space for retail traders to share lessons and ideas about systematic trading. Read more about the founders of Robot Wealth here. 

Robot Wealth provides online learning resources for systematic traders. Educational content is delivered for free via our blog and YouTube channel and we also regularly run 6-week Bootcamps which open to the public several times a year. Bootcamps are structured online courses and include online lessons, weekly live webinars, all data and an instant community of Bootcamp peers with which to learn, problem-solve and troubleshoot with via a private Slack™ workspace.

Graduates of our Bootcamps are offered entry into the RW Pro community - more info about RW Pro can be found here.

We trade a portfolio of strategies alongside our members that we have thoroughly researched, developed and continue to maintain. We wouldn't trade anything that we didn't thoroughly understand, and neither should you.

Robot Wealth trades futures, equities, and options with Interactive Brokers. We trade FX through Darwinex.

Yes, we do! Learn more about it here.

This is such an important question, we wrote a blog post about it.

When thinking about Bootcamp and RW Pro, keep in mind that the real value is not in the trading strategies that we'll give you as part of Bootcamp. The real value is in acquiring the ability to go from trading ideas through research and finally implementation independently. The strategies are excellent and valuable in themselves, but with those skills, you can trade for a lifetime.

The most useful language for doing data analysis is R. In particular, the tidyverse suite of tools provide wonderfully productive and efficient workflows for the sort of research you'll do all the time as a trader. Python is the most useful general-purpose programming language to pick up as a beginner. Don't think you need to pick one single programming language either - it's definitely not a 'one or the other' type choice. At different times in your trading career, you'll also find it helpful to know some SQL, Bash, maybe even a C-based language. As a beginner, focus on getting good at using the tidyverse tools and R more generally. Start picking up Python when you need to do something other than data analysis and view your programming education as a lifelong journey of discovery and refinement.

Zorro isn't might not be the most well-known program in the trading community, even though it's been around since about 2012. We don't recommend that people abandon their existing tools in favour of Zorro, but we use Zorro in our course materials. Decisions around picking the best tools for the job are more nuanced than "this software is better!" type discussions. If you're already fluent and productive in another software, then investing the time to learn Zorro may not offer a great ROI for you. On the other hand, if you're finding that another program is time-consuming, or you're running backtests that take all day, then you might find that Zorro is a good tool to have in your arsenal.

Benefits of using Zorro:

• Super fast backtesting
• Long-term, multi-asset, intraday backtests can be performed in seconds
• Quick strategy prototyping
• Once you get the syntax, you can write prototypes of your algorithms very quickly
• Some good design decisions around modeling costs and preventing future peeking 
• Easy integration with R and Python

Robot Wealth assumes you aren’t a complete beginner in the financial markets. In particular, we won't go into the basics of trading, other than how they relate to the Bootcamp itself. It's also great if you have some programming experience, but this is not a prerequisite. If you are new to programming, you might be out of your comfort zone while you get up to speed, but you will have ongoing access to Bootcamp material that you can revisit in your own time.

Bootcamp lessons will be released in sequence each week. This is to make sure we are all collaborating on the same tasks simultaneously and ensures no one is left behind while others speed ahead. Written content is generally released on Monday, webinars are held on Tuesdays and the Slack channels are running 24/7 for you to ask questions whenever you like. This channel will stay active for a few months after the Bootcamp ends. 

Live webinars are usually scheduled at 8am or 8pm AEST (GMT+10). All webinars are recorded and made available with a couple of hours of being held. You can submit questions for us to address in the webinars ahead of time, if you are unable to make it live. Most Bootcamps are six to eight weeks, but can vary. You will have LIFETIME access to all your Bootcamp material, so you can pause and resume it whenever you want. No time restrictions.

If you decide to cancel,we offer a full 30-day, money-back guarantee with Bootcamp. That means you can try over 60% of the course and then decide if it’s still right for you. There's absolutely no risk to your capital in trying it out.

You can work through the weekly materials in one hour or less per day. Once a week we host live webinars that are usually one and half to two hours, and members can submit questions in advance. These are always recorded and available for playback at your convenience.

Embrace the Mayhem contains the lessons that Kris & James picked up over their trading careers, but they keep it fairly conceptual in the book. That's because doing the detail justice would be quite an enormous undertaking, which we do incrementally through Bootcamps and courses. So the short answer is, no, that level of detail isn't in the book, but it is an excellent overview of what we do and why, and required reading before you think about joining us for a Bootcamp.

RW Pro is our private community of professional and retail traders with exclusive access to our RW Proprietary Trading operation.

The community includes members from 30+ countries and is active 24/7 via our private Slack™ Workspace. As well as being able to see what we trade, discuss ideas and problem solve together, RW Pro members have access to:

• all our data (currently includes FX, Crypto and CFD data)
• watch us do research in real time via our regular Alpha bootcamps
• RW Insider Blog and research posts
• all past and future Bootcamp educational content, including video lessons, code libraries and webinar recordings. 

As time goes on, we've found that many of the senior members contribute to the ongoing research and development effort as well. For instance, we've had people continue to develop the FX portfolio by adding new strategies, and other people develop reporting and accounting applications for specific trading strategies. 

After you complete one of our Bootcamps, you will receive an invitation to join our RW Pro group. 

The Lab is our portal for community-based, collaborative research. It consists of 

The Lab scales the research effort across the community while at the same time, your quant skills continue to develop through hands-on practice and regular feedback.

In practical terms, this means that two things grow faster than they otherwise would:

1. The number of edges available to the community to trade
2. Your quant research skills and market knowledge

The Lab is available to RW Pro members.

We support R and Python in The Lab.

Absolutely. Learning any new skill is a journey. It will take time and effort. You can still follow along with the research that others are contributing as well as contribute your own ideas, sans code. In fact, running other people's research code (which is all available to you as a member) will massively short-cut your coding journey. We also have a bunch of "research code building blocks" that you can use rather than writing everything from scratch.

Like learning to code, learning to do data analysis takes time. Also like coding, it is an incredibly valuable skill to acquire, not only as it relates to trading. One major focus of The Lab is helping you develop your data analysis skills. To that end, we have many examples of good research that you can learn from, as well as "code blocks" to help you get started. Everyone is constantly learning and improving their data analysis skills - so you won't be alone.

Fair enough. We get that. Here at RW, we're very interested in playing the long game with the community. There's certainly no expectation that you get stuck in and contribute to The Lab from day one. 

Instead, our immediate focus is helping you build out your trading operation while encouraging the development of your quant trading skills. There are a ton of things that you can do in RW Pro besides The Lab to further these goals - past Bootcamps, Slack discussions, weekly webinars, an insiders blog with real-time trade ideas, and various courses to name a few.

We know that your development as a quant trader will be invaluable to both you and the community - and while there's no expectation, we'll be ready and waiting when you feel like getting involved with The Lab.