I'm a programmer and quant trader. I first started coding as a child in the early 1990s on a VTech Pre Computer Power Pad, I believe, which had BASIC pre-installed. It wasn't long until I got my first PC, a 90MHz machine running Windows 95, the hottest OS at the time. I was enchanted. I still remember that the next PC I got was a 350MHz MEDION PC from Aldi. There were many computers over the years; you'll always remember your first.
It was the time of freeware, shareware and computer gaming. It was also the early days of the internet - a better, more social internet than today's in some ways, if you ask me. The sky was the limit.
In the mid-90s, just out of elementary school, I eventually taught myself a bit of C++ with a paperback book I'd bought from my pocket money. A terrible book in retrospect, but truly fascinating to me at the time. Bill Gates and John Carmack were my heros then (as were Boris Becker and Steffi Graf). I read the German edition of Gates's Business @ the Speed of Thought when I was twelve years old.
The software I write today is open source, published under the MIT licence:
Copyright 2025 Dominik Mueller
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
Software development
My current projects include:
Ruby Wine cellar management and tasting note platform
I had long been bothered that managing my cellar depended entirely on CellarTracker and that my tasting notes were stored only there. To gain independence, I developed my own platform. Built on a database of wines, bottles, producers, regions and extensive meta‑information, it allows the creation of a self‑hosted website to manage one’s collection, design elegant wine lists, and share notes with the world if desired. Other users can join, take part in discussions, and be assigned different access rights. Currently in preparation for the open-source Github release.
Quant research
I publish quantitative finance research within a dedicated Github repository, too. I usually use Python Jupyter Notebooks for that.
Please understand that, while I share my research work and source codes for transparency and to facilitate collaboration, I cannot share the underlying data, which are subjected to commercial licence agreements.
Everything I contribute to that repository is open source and my own work, unless noted otherwise. I do my best to give credit to the original source whenever I use external sources or information.
Disclaimer
Everything I write is my own personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect the opinion of my employer. Nothing I write is investment advice. You invest at your own risk. Past performance is no indicator of future performance.