Welcome to the Trading From Scratch community

Introduction

Hi, my name is Joerg, and I am a former software engineer who has become a full-time trader with over 8 years of experience in running algorithmic trading systems. My mission is to foster a community that uses AI to develop a fully autonomous trading desk by providing the knowledge, mindset, and tools to let members thrive.

As a heads up, this community is at its very beginning. I seek first feedback to confirm that there is a real demand for it with this early access and low subscription price. Consequently, there is no track record to share yet. What I can assure you is that I make enough profits with my personal trading and investments to dedicate myself full-time. The best proof is to put the content to the test. Therefore, I will use the exact knowledge given to you to build up strategies and let it trade with my own money. As soon as I have a strategy running in production, I will publish the real-time performance.

Serious work involved

This community is not a get-rich-quick track. It is the wrong place if you expect finalised strategies you can deploy and get rich overnight. You have the biggest edge when you develop your own unique setups and strategies. I will provide everything you need to learn how to discover patterns, backtest, and refine them. This ensures you will always have suitable setups and strategies that fit your personal trading style. In other words, you learn to master fishing yourself, instead of me handing over the fish. I have learned the hard way that it is not enough to simply hand over the tools. Performance improves significantly when the right mindset is applied. The best way to develop your mind is through perfect practice. See what I have provided as a reference and try to improve it.

Starting from scratch

We start from scratch, with no prior knowledge required. All you need is curiosity and a hunger to grow. There are no dumb questions, only incompetent answers. In fact, your questions help me grade the content and provide important feedback. If a topic is unclear or incomplete, I will fill in the knowledge gap until you fully understand it. Everything is kept hands-on, so you can always try it out and experiment for yourself. Even though there is a lot of code involved, you do not need to know how to write code yourself. Agents will do the coding for you. The only two skills you need to develop yourself relentlessly are to articulate yourself clearly and to check for quality.

There are three pillars

The art of trading, the art of using AI, and the art of mastering yourself. The art of trading contains everything you need to trade for yourself successfully. We can only optimise what we master ourselves, so mastering the art of trading is key. The art of using AI is to refine the agents constantly. The third pillar is necessary because trading and AI are two very fast-moving fields. You achieve the best progress when your whole self is involved. That is your body, your mind and your soul. Your body needs energy for the entire day, your mind needs to stay sharp and focused, and you need to draw energy from the progress you make. Mastering yourself will help you understand yourself and optimise every part, as professional athletes do.

Letting you thrive

My goal is to unblock you on your journey. No matter where you are located or who is online, you always need to be able to get answers to your questions. All the content will be markdown first. That includes prompts to use LLMs as a coach, an analyst, an evaluator, or whatever your need is. This enables you to reproduce the results and play with them to find answers to your questions if no one else is available. We also build all the necessary tools ourselves. I use Claude Code, but feel free to use your preferred Model. If you do not want to deal with the technical side, you can always use my reference implementation, which includes clear instructions on how to run it. You are also perfectly fine focusing solely on manual trading. We use AI to automate the boring parts and to ensure quality. Everything that is highly rewarding and joyful is still our own pleasure.

The first stage

The first available stage is the bootcamp, where you develop and run your first strategy with the help of four agents. It gives you a high-level overview of what will follow. The default instrument is trading SPOT cryptocurrencies on Binance. The main reasons for Binance are 24/7 trading, good volume, full API integration, and free real-time and historical data. Binance enables everyone to practise, regardless of timezone or availability. If you do not have access to Binance due to legal constraints, I can assist you in transitioning to another trading venue, as more exchanges, instruments, and brokers will be integrated in the future. The implementation will always be modular and flexible so that you can compose your toolset like Lego bricks.

Culture

I deeply care about culture. Think of a professional sports team where peers support each other to win together. Honesty to earn trust, humility to treat everyone with respect, openness to accepting different opinions, and an internal desire to get better every day. We only care about robust results. Everything else has to be proven first. Not all members will be equally motivated or committed. If you are as excited as I am, you are highly welcome to push the boundaries. If you would rather take it slowly, you are perfectly fine to take a back seat and take the time you need. Every month, I will ask for honest feedback on what helped the most and what helped the least. Based on that, I will expand the lessons and knowledge to constantly progress towards the end goal of a fully autonomous trading desk.

Deliverables

We hold weekly meetings to discuss and address the biggest pain points. These meetings are not recorded to encourage everyone to participate with their cameras on, but there will be a summary for those who cannot make it. There will also be a live and recorded trading session every week to explain setups, concepts, and skills. Seeing everything in action gives a much richer picture and provides important feedback. If you do not have much time, those two meetings take roughly three hours per week. For good progress, expect 5-8 hours per week. But keep in mind that the more effort you put in, the more you grow. Even though the reference implementation and prompts keep improving and make things easier, the knowledge behind them still needs to be earned. Just reading about it is not sufficient to master it.

Rewards and giveaways

To encourage participation, rewards will be announced every month for top members. Those incentives are here to foster progress and unblock you. Until we have more suitable rewards, 250 USDT is the default. The winner can use it for an AI subscription or to run their solution with real money. Whatever boots their progress the most. An example of getting such a reward is when you reach your next level and share a personal story of how you achieved it, which encourages others to level up too. Another example would be to help other members.

A fit for you

This community is for you if you want to level up your trading craft and are willing to put in the necessary effort. You can either trade yourself or let your AI boosted bots trade for you. In case you discover you do not like trading, you will get at least a real example of how to understand your psychology and treat yourself like an athlete by leveraging AI agents to automate as much as possible. That is highly valuable and applicable to any craft.