Yes, trading using algorithms to try to make money. Emphasis on the word "try".
I love it, regardless of my level of success in it. My friend is a day trader, and he gave me one of his setups for trading. I didn't believe him, so I downloaded the data, wrote the code to simulate it across a few years, and then all of a sudden, this became a computer problem that I could try to solve through programming. I've been hooked ever since. There are a lot of much smarter people doing a lot more successful ventures than me, but for a hobby, I really do love it, and it completely reinvigorated my interests in programming.
Yes, I always thought I could use my math/CS skills to try to make some extra cash on the side, but not even sure where to start (working in healthcare now). I was always under the impression you have to be "close to the market" to be able to trade effectively, i.e. pay a lot of money to have direct access to the latest information, trading API's etc.
No, I think you mean High Frequency Trading, which is a specialized form of algorithmic trading. Algorithmic trading just means you use a computer to execute trades based on algorithms that you define.
It can be as easy as "buy at market open, sell at market close". Or it could be much more complicated, for example, the stuff that quants do. I'm much closer to the former than the latter. You can definitely pay for things like a real-time data feed (less than $100/month) and trade real time, or you can choose to expand your time frame and do swing-trades with daily data which you could probably get from Yahoo.
And believe me, it's very, very hard, to the point where I almost don't think it's possible. But I still love it.
Thanks, how would you recommend learning about trading platforms. Say I can write a basic trading program in Matlab and Python, who should my program be communicating with?
I'm not the guy you asked the question of, but "algorithmic trading" is most likely trading the financial markets using technical indicators. Here's a book I read recently that provides a nice intro into the subject, with plenty of code examples sprinkled throughout:
