Look inside

about the technology

Automated “robo-advisors” are commonplace in financial services, thanks to their ability to give high-quality investment advice at a fraction of the cost of human advisors. Your own robo-advisor will be a real asset for your financial planning, whether you’re saving for retirement, creating a diversified portfolio, or trying to ensure your tax efficiency.

about the book

In Build a Robo-Advisor with Python (From Scratch), you’ll design and develop a working financial advisor that can manage a real investing strategy. You’ll add new features to your advisor chapter-by-chapter, including determining the optimal weight of cryptocurrency in your portfolio, rebalancing to keep your investments on target while minimizing taxes, and using reinforcement learning to find a “glide path” that can maximize how long your money will last in retirement. Best of all, the skills you learn in reinforcement learning, convex optimization, and Monte Carlo methods can be applied to numerous lucrative fields beyond the domain of finance.

about the reader

The book is accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of Python and finance—no special skills required.

about the authors

Rob Reider has been a quantitative hedge fund portfolio manager for over 15 years. He holds a PhD in Finance from The Wharton School and is an Adjunct Professor at NYU, where he teaches a graduate course in the Math-Finance department called “Time Series Analysis and Statistical Arbitrage.” He has built asset allocation models, financial planning tools, and optimal tax strategies for a robo-advisor. Rob has given numerous lectures that combine Python with finance, as well as developing an online course entitled “Time Series Analysis in Python.” As a hedge fund manager, Rob has been involved in all aspects of the investment process, from discovering new trading strategies to backtesting, executing, and managing the risk.

Alex Michalka has worked in finance and technology since 2006. He began his career developing weather derivative pricing models at Weatherbill, spent six years conducting research on quantitative equity portfolio construction at AQR Capital Management, and currently leads the investments research group at Wealthfront. He holds a BA in applied mathematics from UC Berkeley and a PhD in operations research from Columbia University.