Hands-On Financial Trading with Python

Book excerpt: Build and backtest your algorithmic trading strategies to gain a true advantage in the market Key FeaturesGet quality insights from market data, stock analysis, and create your own data visualisationsLearn how to navigate the different features in Python's data analysis librariesStart systematically approaching quantitative research and strategy generation/backtesting in algorithmic tradingBook Description Creating an effective system to automate your trading can help you achieve two of every trader's key goals; saving time and making money. But to devise a system that will work for you, you need guidance to show you the ropes around building a system and monitoring its performance. This is where Hands-on Financial Trading with Python can give you the advantage. This practical Python book will introduce you to Python and tell you exactly why it's the best platform for developing trading strategies. You'll then cover quantitative analysis using Python, and learn how to build algorithmic trading strategies with Zipline using various market data sources. Using Zipline as the backtesting library allows access to complimentary US historical daily market data until 2018. As you advance, you will gain an in-depth understanding of Python libraries such as NumPy and pandas for analyzing financial datasets, and explore Matplotlib, statsmodels, and scikit-learn libraries for advanced analytics. As you progress, you'll pick up lots of skills like time series forecasting, covering pmdarima and Facebook Prophet. By the end of this trading book, you will be able to build predictive trading signals, adopt basic and advanced algorithmic trading strategies, and perform portfolio optimization to help you get —and stay—ahead of the markets. What you will learnDiscover how quantitative analysis works by covering financial statistics and ARIMAUse core Python libraries to perform quantitative research and strategy development using real datasetsUnderstand how to access financial and economic data in PythonImplement effective data visualization with MatplotlibApply scientific computing and data visualization with popular Python librariesBuild and deploy backtesting algorithmic trading strategiesWho this book is for If you're a financial trader or a data analyst who wants a hands-on introduction to designing algorithmic trading strategies, then this book is for you. You don't have to be a fully-fledged programmer to dive into this book, but knowing how to use Python's core libraries and a solid grasp on statistics will help you get the most out of this book.