Analyze investment strategies using historical data in Go
Programming Snapshot – Go Stock Trading

© Lead Image © agor2012 123RF.com
Mike Schilli uses a Go program to check whether a strategy for trading stocks is making gains or losses on the basis of historical price data.
People say that you're always smarter with the benefit of hindsight; of course, this also applies to stock market trading. Based on the ups and downs in the historical performance of a stock, it seems as clear as the light of day when an investor should have bought or sold stocks in order to leverage upswings and reap huge profits.
It goes without saying that it is infinitely more difficult to speculate successfully with stocks whose price development is still unknown. Chemistry wizard Niels Bohr once quipped that forecasts are generally difficult, especially those concerning the future.
Random Fools
I recently stumbled across a book titled Fooled by Randomness [1] and read about a theory stating that most successful stock market speculators were simply lucky. This may sound unlikely to the average person, but it does seem plausible given the tiny proportion of successful speculators. Be that as it may, one section of the book made me sit up and take notice. In this section, author Nassim Nicholas Taleb mentions that he had commissioned a software company to write a "backtester," a program that is familiar with the historical price data of interesting stocks and that checks trading strategies packaged into algorithms to see whether the strategies would have succeeded in a historical context.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.

News
-
AerynOS Alpha Release Available
With a choice of several desktop environments, AerynOS 2025.08 is almost ready to be your next operating system.
-
AUR Repository Still Under DDoS Attack
Arch User Repository continues to be under a DDoS attack that has been going on for more than two weeks.
-
RingReaper Malware Poses Danger to Linux Systems
A new kind of malware exploits modern Linux kernels for I/O operations.
-
Happy Birthday, Linux
On August 25, Linux officially turns 34.
-
VirtualBox 7.2 Has Arrived
With early support for Linux kernel 6.17 and other new additions, VirtualBox 7.2 is a must-update for users.
-
Linux Mint 22.2 Beta Available for Testing
Some interesting new additions and improvements are coming to Linux Mint. Check out the Linux Mint 22.2 Beta to give it a test run.
-
Debian 13.0 Officially Released
After two years of development, the latest iteration of Debian is now available with plenty of under-the-hood improvements.
-
Upcoming Changes for MXLinux
MXLinux 25 has plenty in store to please all types of users.
-
A New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle, a Linux AI assistant, works with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.