Algo Trader's Pre-Live Checkup Uncovers Silent Bugs and False Test Results

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A developer working on an algorithmic trading system spent the weekend reviewing strategy ideas and conducting a pre-live-trading audit of their codebase. On Saturday, three long-standing strategy questions — changing execution frequency, continuous trading, and switching to US markets — were each analysed and shelved, leaving the existing three-times-a-day domestic framework unchanged. Sunday's checkup revealed that the system was still routing orders to a paper-trading account despite documentation stating otherwise, and that key safety-guard tests were passing without actually verifying the intended logic. A separate bug in the budget calculation had inadvertently avoided trading on sharp-drop days, artificially inflating historical performance figures. All findings were ranked by severity and documented, with the developer noting that none of the issues would have surfaced without a dedicated pre-launch review.

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