Algorithmic Trading Gaining Ground

India is programmed to go the algorithmic trading way just like rest of the world since it helps to sidestep many ‘human errors’ that trip high volume traders adopting traditional trading methods.

The future of trading is in ‘programmed trading’ and India is heading the same way as other countries have been doing. Most of the day-traders lose money and it is estimated that 95 per cent of trading ended up in losses. While there is no assurance that by feeding the trading strategy into a computer, the success of it could be ensured, the chances of successful trading could go up. This is because many of the human weaknesses, like increasing the size of the order while smelling profit that would result in losses ultimately, will be eliminated and ‘that is the most important thing’.

No Human Emotion

The algorithmic trading is based on a programme written by an analyst or trader with parameters set earlier and it could be a jobbing programme or arbitrage trading etc. The advantage is that ‘human emotions will not play a part’ since the computer would execute the orders according to the programme.

It is a fully-automated process, no human intervention is needed and it is ‘away from sentiments’. The traders could do the trading in cash segments, F&O segment etc and the trading could be done in different scrips and there is the facility of putting stop loss too. The volume buying could be done at different price points giving the buyer the benefit of cost averaging and the buy/sell could be done in micro seconds. The high volatility the markets have been witnessing in the past six months has given greater opportunity for algorithmic trading.

While algorithmic trading facility is available in both NSE and BSE, because of the huge trading volume in NSE, more trades are taking place in that exchange. But one could buy in one exchange and sell in another. The algorithmic trading helped in improving liquidity and the traders could fix their own targets for buy or sell, which could be executed automatically.

Algorithmic trading is more suitable for trading in frontline stocks that had ample liquidity because when a sell order was generated, it should be executable. For HNIs, who have on hand a large volume of shares, they could set different price points for sale to average the selling price; and greater the market volatility, the greater is the opportunity in automated trading.