This may seem like a silly question as this forum is all about sharing code but here goes anyway…. Is sharing code a good thing or a bad thing to do? If (and when!) I code a strategy that makes more money than I know what to do with then I will have no problem at all in sharing it for free with others so that they can better their lives. In fact I would probably never have written the code if others had not shared their knowledge. In fact if enough people were to use the code then it might actually help move the markets in the direct of my trades (that’s more of a dream than reality as we are all minnows swimming with big financial sharks). But there could be a downside to sharing – if say just for example IG notice that 90% of there customers are trading at identical times in identical markets then it won’t take them long to find the code and reverse engineer it so that they can put in spikes in price or widen the spread to suddenly close everyone out (am I correct in understanding that IG set their own market prices?). That wonderful strategy that worked so well suddenly has us all scratching our heads and saying ‘That never happened in backtesting’. I’d like to think that the spread betting companies would just trade along with us and hedge their risk and keep us all as happy customers while also happily pocketing the spread. I’d be interested in others thoughts on the good and bad of sharing code.
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