As a noob in investing, I kept hearing about record returns at top financial companies and hedge funds. So I figured, how hard can this be? Really?
Hence, I setup a personal challenge few years ago to not only learn but outperform top financial companies & hedge funds. I started working on algorithmic trading project. With an engineering background and a minor Economics, I had inadequate background, limited programming experience and funding; but loads of passion to accomplish this goal (a good enough combo).
Fast-forward 3 years later, I have created multiple trading algorithms in MATLAB, Python, AutoHotKey etc and managing 6 individual accounts (mine inclusive) with average annual returns of 15-20%; which is much better than average hedge fund, as measured by the Hedge Fund Research composite (HRFX) index. Not bad for a side project.