There’s a huge difference between carrying a stethoscope and being a doctor.
But I see traders every day who assume Claude and ChatGPT are 7-figure traders with all the answers just because they code really well.
Being good at writing code might give you an advantage, but it was never the one thing that made traders great, even before LLMs.
Claude’s sheer confidence makes it easy to fall into the trap of treating LLMs like your trading CEO, when you should treat them like your summer intern instead.
LLMs have never made a trade or had to make decisions to put food on the table.
But more and more traders treat them like trading oracles, which is a big mistake.
I work with several professional and retail traders who trade full-time.
They use LLMs very differently than beginners.
Here are some typical beginner questions:
- I have some money to invest, what stock should I buy?
- Create a profitable trading strategy for me.
- I’m trying to decide between these two trades, which one should I take?
Notice how these prompts are broad and treat LLMs like they’re the ones in charge, with the experience and intuition to know the future.
Here are the types of prompts you’ll see from professional traders:
- Here are two different charts. What are the common patterns I can use as a starting point for a backtest?
- Here are the steps I take to prepare for the trading day (1, 2, 3…). How can I streamline my process to make it more efficient?
- Help me create a process to quickly and accurately compute my desired position size when trading in real time.
These prompts are much more specific and provide more context.
The answers are far more useful and applicable to what traders already do.
A good CEO wouldn’t let an intern set the company’s overall strategy.
Give your intern more work, not more authority.
AI makes it easier than ever to backtest a trading idea. It also makes it easier than ever to fool yourself.
My free Better Backtesting email course shows you how to use AI as part of a rigorous backtesting process – so you can test more ideas without lowering your standards.
Get the free course → Better Backtesting
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