Hi folks, 

I'm new to the QC community and excited to learn and apply some algo trading skills! 

I would like to ask to the more experienced   algo traders (and of course everyone else who would like to share his/her experience) how probable it actually is to come up with a profitable algo? What are realistic expectations? 

Do simple strategies outperform complex ones or vice versa? Is it like searching for the needle in the haystack? Or are there actually many profitable strategies and the difficulties lies more on the risk/money management/etc or coding side?

Is this an area where retail traders can have good room to expand our is it already saturated and dominated by big firms and banks?

Thanks and have a good day!

Thom