Attention rocket scientists: Quantopian launches trading pilot program

Just a quick post to pass along news from Quantopian, the open algorithmic trading development platform, trading platform and social hub for quants I first wrote about back at launch in January. Today, the firm introduced the notion of paper trading and announced the launch of the Quantopian Live Trading pilot program. They did so as part of FinovateSpring, a conference showcasing the latest innovations in finance and banking technology, being held in California today and tomorrow (some might recall that Mint.com got a boost after pitching itself at a Finnovate conference way back in 2007). Paper trading, according to today's prepared statement, allows users to test trading algorithms against live market data, which is critical to optimizing the algorithms during development. The pilot will initially be open only to a select group of users, with availability to the mass public of clamoring quants later this year. "Anyone with a mind for finance and a knack for development should be able to put their ideas to work and reap the benefits of quantitative finance for themselves," said John 'Fawce' Fawcett, founder and CEO of Quantopian in today's statement. "Through paper trading and the Live Trading pilot program, we're making it possible for quants to put their money where their minds are. It's something our community has asked for and we are excited to deliver." A total of 60 companies are presenting at FinovateSpring. Anyone interested in joining the pilot user group for Quantopian Live Trading should visit Quantopian online. You can visit the site for FinovateSpring online as well. Related Stories:Fascinating algorithms: Quantopian brings black-box trading to the massesQuantopian provides tools, storage and protection for user-created algorithmsA chat with the founders of Quantopian, The co-founders like, respect and think quants are underserved — and have too little access to tools of their own