The Sauce · Money & Markets
Rules-Based Trading Bot (Paper-First Discipline)
Build and backtest a simple rules-based strategy, run it paper-traded for months before any real money, and treat it as a slow systematic experiment — not a get-rich button.
Submitted by @@systematicslow · 2026-05-31
💸 Highly variable / real loss risk/mo
Editorial estimate — no community reports yet. Be the first.
$0–$50/mo + risk capital you can lose
Startup cost
Advanced
Difficulty
Months (often net-negative early)
Time to $1
The stack
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The playbook
- 1
Start with ONE simple, explainable strategy (e.g. a moving-average or momentum rule) — if you can't explain why it should work, don't trade it.
- 2
Code it with Claude's help and backtest rigorously in QuantConnect across multiple market regimes, watching hard for overfitting and unrealistic fills.
- 3
Paper-trade live through Alpaca for at least 2-3 months to see real slippage, fees, and your own behavior — most strategies that look great backtested fall apart here.
- 4
Only if paper results hold, go live with tiny size you can fully afford to lose, keeping strict risk limits and a kill-switch.
- 5
Journal every trade and review monthly; scale size only as the live track record proves out, and kill the strategy the moment its edge decays.