Robot James 
Data analysis plays a central role in making sense of financial markets. But how can you verify the conclusions others draw, or better yet, uncover your own insights? Microsoft Excel remains one of the most powerful and accessible tools for financial data analysis, allowing anyone—from beginners to seasoned analysts—to explore data, test hypotheses, and make …
In much of life, success results from doing what other people expect you to be doing. You get top marks in an exam by answering the way the marker expects you to. Rising up the corporate ladder has as much to do with “being seen to do the right thing” as it has to do …
Towards the end of last year, we ran a couple of free Zoom webinars on: Here are the recordings: Basics of Edge Extraction Data analysis for Traders The colab research notebook for the second session can be found here. (To make sense of it you’ll want to watch the video.)
Imagine you’re a relatively small, independent trader trying to turn trading from a hobby into a serious business. If that’s you, then there are a few concepts that will help you pick the right trades to get after. This is important because picking the right trades is most of the game. First, the Market Gods …
If you have some factor that you think predicts future stock returns (or similar) and you are making charts like below, then here are some tips… We’ll go through an example of trying to “time” SPX with the level of VIX. You get daily SPX index prices and daily VIX close data You align them …
Many beginner traders don’t realize how variable the p&l of a high-performing trading strategy really is. Here’s an example… I simulated ten different 5 year GBM processes with expected annual returns of 20% and annualized volatility of 10%. (If you speak Sharpe Ratios, I’m simulating a strategy within known Sharpe 2 characteristics.) I plotted the …
I’ve been helping a family friend with his trading. I’ve given him a simple systematic strategy to trade by hand. First, we set expectations We can plot the distribution of historic trade returns from past trading or a backtest as a histogram. This is useful because it gives us a hint as to what …
I have been sharing examples of simple real-time trading research on my Twitter account. I do this kind of thing a lot in the training program of our trading group – and I’m sharing in the hope that it might also help a wider audience. Here’s a piece of analysis I did recently on a really …
The S&P index committee recently announced that Tesla, already one of the biggest stocks listed in the country, would be included in the S&P 500. Here’s the press release: Due to TSLA’s size, it was widely expected to have entered the S&P 500 index much earlier – but S&P has some discretionary criteria it applies …
You rarely meet a rich forex trader. I’ve met plenty of rich traders who trade quant factors or stat arb. Plenty of market makers, futures spreaders and volatility traders that do nicely. But I don’t think I’ve ever met a rich forex trader. Jeez man – what a downer! Don’t run away, we’re gonna turn …
