# Coded Strategy vs. Stock Screener



## Wysiwyg (23 November 2009)

What are the advantages of constructing a coded trading strategy against a stock screener?

Stock screeners are already programmed and it is simply a click on the criteria to find the stock required as opposed to learning and adding computer code to perform a function in a trading program. 

I feel coded system design and particularly the time required to learn the code, backtest, optimise, forward test is a huge time vacuum and is overrated by the suppliers and their party faithfuls. 

Position size, risk level, entry and exit criteria come under the KISS (keep it simple Sally) banner. Once this knowledge is acquired then a good screener is all that is needed.


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## CascadeX (23 December 2009)

Coding is better IMO if ... and only if ... you have the requisite skills. This takes an investment of time. The advantages of code is customization and scalability. Scale as in writing something once, and then applying it to thousands of stocks or instances. This, in the long run is way more efficient and powerful than using pure human knowledge or just a stock screener. A stock screener is in a sense, a coded strategy as well, however it combines human interaction. 

But if you don't have the skills then it's probably better to just stick to manual labor. 

there are somethings that machines are inherently better at.


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## Wysiwyg (24 December 2009)

CascadeX said:


> Coding is better IMO if ... and only if ... you have the requisite skills. This takes an investment of time. The advantages of code is customization and scalability.



 Yes the investment of time is a real turn off. I hope someone comes out with a natural language to programming language converter like the Tradestation Easy Language dictionary. Some of us just aren't born programmers.


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