QuantStart: 2014 in Review

QuantStart: 2014 in Review

Now that 2014 is well and truly behind us, I thought it would be appropriate to carry out an annual review for QuantStart. Many of you have asked for some "behind the scenes" insights for some time, so I've decided to discuss some of the interesting issues and events that have occured over the past year. In addition, I'd like to let you know what is in store for 2015, as there are many exciting things planned for the site.

QuantStart 2014 Statistics

This year has seen some major growth for QuantStart. In the 2014 period, the site has seen 385,275 unique visitors, with a combined total of 1,608,966 pageviews.

In the 2013 period, the site saw 165,392 unique visitors, across 588,085 pageviews.

Thus the site has seen an approximate user growth of 132% and an approximate pageview growth of 174%. Hopefully these growth figures will stay consistent as we enter 2015!

The most popular articles on the site (excluding the home page and the articles list itself) were as follows:

The Reading List is consistently popular, although I will be updating it soon to reflect the new texts I have been reading in the last year.

In addition to the new article content and visitor growth, I also released the second QuantStart ebook, Successful Algorithmic Trading. The book has been extremely well received so far and I'm hoping to build upon the content within it this year.

Email Survey Results

About a month ago I sent out an email to the mailing list asking readers what they would most like to read about in the coming year. I presented four broad options, which I know are all topics valued highly by the QuantStart community. I asked individuals to vote on their favourite topic to be written about. The topics and the percentage votes are given below:

  • Quant Finance Careers/MFEs (12%)
  • Python Programming (20%)
  • Statistical Machine Learning and Time Series Analysis (34%)
  • Advanced Algorithmic Trading (34%)

For the coming year I will try and split the new content in an approximate proportion to these votes, in order to be as democratic as possible!

I had an incredibly enthusiastic response with regards to article suggestions as well. Many of which I will be incorporating into the writing schedule for this year.

In particular, some of the key suggestions were as follows:

  • Don't go back to the "beginner" Python tutorials, as they can all be found around the net. Stick with the intermediate and more advanced Python code (including the data analysis libraries) as that's where there is little information elsewhere.
  • "Real-world" application of statistical machine learning and time series analysis, not just plain theory, and how it is applied to algorithmic trading.
  • Keep creating the "end-to-end" systems so that we can all see how to carry out the "nitty-gritty", not just the high-level overview.

I will be taking these suggestions on board. In particular, I will try to write articles that are as self-contained as possible (or at least spread out over a few articles) in order that you can test the code fully yourself.

New Writers

I asked the mailing list and the site readers if they would be happy to write for QuantStart this year and I'm extremely pleased to say that we've added a new member to our team - Valerio Restocchi.

Valerio is currently writing a fantastic set of CUDA articles for the site and is planning on writing some more for 2015. I'm really looking forward to following his tutorials and I hope you are too!

What's Coming Up in 2015?

2015 is going to be an extremely exciting year for the QuantStart community. I've been busy planning new article ideas and features for the site over the Christmas holiday period.

I'll be spending a lot of time focusing on statistical machine learning, time series analysis, advanced Python programming and more sophisticated algorithmic trading.

In particular, I will be writing about the following topics:

  • Algorithmic forex trading
  • Supervised and unsupervised learning
  • Bayesian statistics and model selection
  • Further brokerage/data feed integration (particularly IB/FIX)
  • Alternative sources of data: Twitter, external blog/articles
  • Natural Language Processing (NLP), document classification and sentiment analysis
  • Time series modelling, more on trends and mean-reversion
  • Bayesian networks and graphical models
  • Useful Python libraries and advanced tutorials
  • Theory and implementation of quantitative portfolio and risk management
  • Volatility trading and volatility risk indicators

Quantcademy

In addition I will be launching a "members-only" area of QuantStart, known as the Quantcademy, where you will be able to take your quantitative finance and algorithmic trading skills to the professional level. At this stage I am still constructing the content, but I will keep you all posted of details as the Quantcademy progresses.

Once again, I hope you had a fantastic holiday period and are looking forward to some new quant finance adventures in 2015!

As always, please send us an email to support@quantstart.com if you have any quant-related questions, and we will try to get back to you as soon as we can.

Cheers,

Mike.