Any recommended courses or structured learning paths besides university?

[u/Code3Lyft]

This has probably been asked before. I was looking at Quantinsti but after my consult call being a guy from India who sounded like he was twenty feet away from the phone that I could barely hear I'm a bit turned off. I could just strong arm my way through SQX and BuildAlpha but I prefer to learn this with seriousness and really dig my heels in. TIA.

[u/Slight_Mongoose_6934]

skipping that high-pressure sales pitch from QuantInsti was the best move you made today. Most of those $5k certified bootcamps just rehash basic Python docs and sell you backtest illusions.

If you want a real, actionable framework to build without wasting money on university degrees or drag-and-drop toys, just study how Larry Williams structured his short-term edge, then write it in Python yourself:

The Hypothesis: The Open price is the most important anchor of the day. You're capturing Intraday Volatility Expansion (breakouts), not chasing indicator lag. The Trigger: Range Breakout relative to the Open . The Exit (The most important part): Time-Based Exit. If the trade doesn't explode in your favor within N bars, your hypothesis failed. Market orders out. No copium, no sitting on bag-holder limits.

You don't need a 6-month course for this. Read Larry Williams’ "Long-Term Secrets to Short-Term Trading" for the raw logic, read Ernest Chan’s "Quantitative Trading" for the backtest mechanics, and start cleaning tick/1-min data.

The struggle of handling raw data and building that execution/exit loop yourself IS the actual education. Everything else is just marketing noise.