A modernized version of the popular Algorithmic Trading Course by freeCodeCamp.org, updated to work with current tools and extended with proper backtesting.
What’s in the Original Course
The freeCodeCamp course teaches three strategies:
- Equal-weight S&P 500 — Replicates an index fund by equally weighting all constituents
- Quantitative momentum — Ranks stocks based on price performance
- Quantitative value — Identifies undervalued stocks using multiple valuation metrics
What’s New
The original course relied on the IEX Cloud API, which has since become deprecated and inaccessible for most users. This repository fixes that and adds features the original lacked:
- Working data source — Replaced IEX Cloud with yfinance for reliable, free market data
- Multithreaded fetching — Optimized data retrieval across hundreds of securities
- Backtesting — Added performance validation against SPY benchmark
- Portfolio optimization — Integrated cvxpy for proper mean-variance optimization in the value strategy
Why This Matters
The original course videos remain one of the best free introductions to algorithmic trading, but without working code, learners hit a wall. This repository makes the course usable again while demonstrating how to validate strategies before risking real capital.