CONCEPT
We have built OLTO Trade Box as a tool for modern traders and investors to solve three basic issues: analysis, execution and reflection. This triad represents a scientific way of achieving results in highly uncertain domains, such as financial markets.
The central problem for an individual trader and investor is the inability to combine different skills which are very different in nature. Each of us has a unique combination of talents but usually gravitates towards something specific regarding trading: perhaps working with numbers or the ability to understand herd psychology.
Hedge funds or institutional buy-side companies solve this problem by hiring different people for different positions: analysts advise portfolio managers while risk managers and auditors ensure the security of operations. Such teamwork creates value when each team member brings something to the table.
An individual trader usually can't do all of the above. Imagine a modern yacht with a brand new navigation system. That's what hedge funds are trying to be. Using this metaphor, a retail trader looks more like an old fisherman's boat, surviving in the waters of today's financial markets.
Paul Tudor Jones once said: "No man is better than a machine, but no machine is better than a man with a machine." A discretionary trader empowered by the OLTO Trade Mentor Services gains an edge like a portfolio manager working with a first-class senior quant analyst. Don't have a Ph.D? Don't worry; we've got you covered.
OLTO Risk Mitigator helps maintain discipline by automatically matching the position with the risk parameters or liquidating positions if necessary.
That was so until now: today, one can use digital tools for assessing one's behaviour and recognise repetitive patterns. We do it in the same way we analyse markets, but the data comes from a trader's digital tracks, which a platform captures and analyses to give custom recommendations.
With OLTO Trade Box, traders have a competitive advantage in the markets and no longer lose multiple accounts while learning.
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HISTORY
Everything began at a traders’ meeting in Novosibirsk in 2014. Several members of the OLTO team have been engaged in private trading for many years: Stan since 2004, Andrew since 2008, Evgeny since 2009 and Nikolai since 2011. The initial idea was to combine traders’ efforts and create an algorithmic trading team. Back in 2014, trading algorithms were quite popular, particularly since Nikolai worked at a research institute and is an expert in programming. The team began developing algorithms and soon they had their first clients who invested in their strategies. After the fifth client, it became obvious that launching and tracking daily strategies for trading accounts took a great deal of time and increased the chances of mistakes. The existing market decisions on the aggregation of trading accounts were not sufficient. Therefore, the idea came up to create a software system that would aggregate client accounts within one program, allowing clients to develop their own strategies and launch each strategy with one click.
The first working version of such a program (MVP) appeared in 2016. We named it “Manager's Panel” using the analogy of a dashboard, where the manager, operator of strategies and clients could monitor trading processes in real-time. We developed the program for our own use.
Technical errors occurred during our asset management work: the stop order could not be executed, the terminal could not connect to the exchange, the open position was not closed at the end of each day (back then, we only used intraday strategies). As a result, we invented an algorithmic risk management system which controlled open positions, cut losses automatically and in any force majeure situations notified us and clients through a messenger bot.
Periodically, requests began to appear from traders who lacked discipline, asking if we had a software solution that would cut unprofitable positions for them and protect them against gambling. We connected them to our program and launched a risk management strategy so clients could not physically disconnect from their accounts or change risk control settings.
In 2019, the team expanded and Oleg (business administration, IR, finance) and Andrew (trader, Operations and IT), joined the project. OLTO Trade Box was conceptualised by Oleg in 2020, and the team has begun building a functioning application.
