Stop guessing, start testing: Discover real market edges using only Excel

Join our 3-week interactive workshop to learn simple, practical data analysis that cuts through market myths and reveals tradable insights – no coding required

Ever heard that you shouldn’t hold stocks below their 200-day moving average? Or that an inverted yield curve means you should run for the hills?

The trading world is full of these “rules” – repeated so often they’re accepted as truth.

But what if you could test these ideas yourself, without relying on someone else’s interpretation?

In just 3 weeks, you’ll work alongside us to analyze 8 real market phenomena using nothing but Excel and freely available data. By the final session, you’ll not only have several genuinely tradable strategies (that I’m trading right now), but more importantly, you’ll have the skills to evaluate any market claim on your own.

The Problem

As a technical-minded trader, you’ve likely experienced this frustrating cycle:

1. You find a promising strategy or indicator
2. You test it exhaustively, optimizing for perfection
3. It looks incredible in backtests
4. It falls apart when you trade it live

The problem isn’t your analysis skills. It’s that you’ve been approaching market research the wrong way.

The engineering mindset that works so well in other fields becomes a liability in trading when it leads to:

• Over-optimization of parameters
• Searching for perfect systems that don’t exist
• Fighting the probabilistic nature of markets
• Getting lost in unnecessary complexity

What you need isn’t more sophisticated tools – it’s a practical approach to finding real edges.

The Solution

Excel Edge Lab is a hands-on workshop that transforms how you approach trading research.

Instead of theoretical concepts or complex coding, you’ll learn practical data analysis techniques using the tool you already know – Microsoft Excel.

Most courses only show you their successes. We’ll show you our entire research process – including what doesn’t work and why. You’ll learn what needs to be true in order for you to have an edge.

Trading is all about managing uncertainty. And in this course, you’ll learn how to think about weighing evidence and navigating trade-offs in edge research.

This is how professional traders think, and it’s what you need to learn to succeed.

What makes this approach different:

• Simple tools, powerful insights: Using only Excel and free data sources, you’ll learn to test market phenomena rigorously but pragmatically
• Live, interactive analysis: You’ll work through each case study with us in real-time, asking questions and getting immediate feedback
• Practical over perfect: Focus on finding realistic edges rather than perfect predictions
• Research patterns you can apply anywhere: Learn reusable analysis frameworks that work across different markets
• Actually tradable results: 5 of the 8 case studies reveal edges I’m trading with my own money right now

What You’ll Learn

Throughout this 3-week intensive workshop, we’ll dismantle market myths and build practical research skills through 8 comprehensive case studies:

1. Long-term stock and bond returns – Discover what really drives excess returns and how to exploit it
2. Daily return patterns in SPY – Learn to analyze volatility clustering and timing signals
3. Turn-of-month effects in government bonds – Test this phenomenon rigorously and build a tradable strategy
4. Day-of-week effects in gold – Separate statistical noise from exploitable patterns
5. Timing government bonds with yield curve signals – Test the inverted yield curve narrative with data
6. SPY/TLT short-term reversal – Analyze relative performance for trading opportunities
7. Buying new highs in crypto – Test counterintuitive approaches to crypto trading
8. Cross-sectional momentum in crypto – Analyze a market-neutral strategy for crypto markets

For each case study, you’ll:

• Pull and clean relevant data
• Make a hypothesis
• Use exploratory analysis to test it
• Interpret results critically
• Draw conclusions by weighing up evidence

Course format

• Dates: 28 April – 16 May
• Format: Live interactive sessions held 3 times weekly for 3 weeks. All sessions are recorded for your reference.
• Time Commitment: 3-4 hours per week total
• Prerequisites: Basic Excel familiarity and foundational trading knowledge (if you’ve placed a trade before, you’re good to go). No coding required.

What You Receive:

• 9 live interactive sessions
• Hands-on analysis during sessions
• Complete Excel workbooks for all 8 case studies
• Lifetime access to recordings of all sessions
• Access to the private Discord community during the course
• Weekly Q&A opportunities

Your instructors

James Hodges

Kris Longmore

Kris is a trader who learned the hard way that you can’t simply engineer your way to trading success. After years of persistence and countless failures, he made the leap from engineer to professional trader, discovering what actually works versus what merely sounds good on paper.

This course is perfect for you if:

• You’re tired of blindly following other traders’ strategies
• You want to validate trading ideas yourself
• You’re comfortable with Excel but don’t want to learn programming
• You’re serious about developing a systematic approach to trading
• You want to see how real trading research is done, not just theory

This course is not a good fit for you if:

• You’re looking for quick trading signals
• You’re not willing to put in 3-4 hours per week
• You’re expecting every analysis to lead to a profitable trade
• You’re not prepared to do some hard thinking

What Students Are Saying

Investment

The edges revealed in this course, when implemented as a portfolio, have historically delivered a Sharpe ratio exceeding 2.0. And while past performance is no guarantee of future performance, and we wouldn’t expect such stellar performance to continue, we think that several are good enough bets that we’re trading them ourselves.

But the true value goes beyond these specific strategies. You’re gaining a research methodology that will serve you for your entire trading career, allowing you to evaluate any market claim or idea independently.

• Course investment: $1,497
• Payment plan available: 3 payments of $549

Bonuses

In addition to the live sessions, Excel templates, and lifetime access to the session replays and other course material, you get:

• Access to the course Discord server for support and connecting with other traders
• A live post-course follow-up session two weeks after the course to answer any questions

Try Excel Edge Lab risk-free

If, after attending the first three sessions, you don’t believe the course will significantly improve your trading research approach, simply let us know, and we’ll refund your investment in full.

A taste of what you’ll see in the course

During the course, you’ll work with us as we seek to understand several edges and market phenomena.

The goal is always to understand enough about the edge to make a decision about whether and how to trade it, given your unique goals, constraints, and take on the evidence.

We’ll show you exactly how we think about this problem.

Some of the things we look at are a total slam dunk, like this one:

There’s also a very good reason to think that sharing this edge won’t kill it – there’s more than enough to go around. We’ll talk about exactly what makes this a good edge in the course.

There’s also an example of something that, to be perfectly honest, we’re on the fence about.

It made decent money over a long period of time, but there’s so much more to the story. Whether you end up trading it will depend on your goals and constraints, as well as your take on the evidence.

The interesting thing is that James ended up passing on this edge, while Kris decided to trade it. And we’re both happy with our decisions.

We’ll show you exactly how we reasoned our respective ways to a decision about this one, and by the end of the course, you’ll be able to think clearly about whether this belongs in your portfolio, too.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is this different to other trading courses?

This course is primarily concerned with making money trading.

That means:

• A relentless focus on the practical over the academic
• No technical analysis or other magical thinking – just edges based on real market dynamics
• Prioritising simple data analysis techniques and a research approach that lets you move fast and disprove things quickly

You’ll learn an approach to trading research that we honed during our professional trading careers and that most beginners overlook. A common assumption is that backtesting is research, while in reality, this is only a tiny part of the bigger picture.

You’ll learn how to:

• Think about research – what questions to ask and what to focus on, and how to weigh evidence in the face of your unique goals and constraints.
• Do the research – simple techniques for answering the right questions by exploring the data.

What experience do I need?

You don’t need any data analysis experience, but we assume you can drive the basic functionality of a spreadsheet and have placed a trade or two in the markets. We will walk you through the analysis step by step.

What is the time commitment?

You’ll need 3-4 hours per week for 3 weeks to attend the live sessions. You’ll probably spend an hour or two each week exploring what you learn as well.

What software do I need?

You’ll need Microsoft Excel. You can also use Google Sheets, but the examples will all be done in Excel.

Do I need advanced Excel skills?

No! We’ll show you exactly how to do the analysis, step by step.

When are the live sessions scheduled?

We’ll alternate the timing of the sessions between morning and evening in Europe/US to try to accommodate everyone.

What if I can’t make the live sessions?

All the sessions will be recorded and made available shortly after they’ve concluded.

What support will I get during the course?

You’ll have access to a Discord server on which James and I will be active. You’ll be able to connect with your peers, too.

What happens after the course? How long will I have access to the materials?

You get lifetime access to the course materials, so you can log in and refresh your learning any time.

We’ll also run a follow-up session two weeks after the conclusion of the course so you can ask any questions that arise in the interim.

Click below to join now

You’ll get some nice trades from this course, but by far the greatest value is in learning how to approach trading research – this gives you the ability to test any market idea or claim independently.

You can try the course risk-free – just let us know if it’s not for you before we kick off session 4 (week 2), and we’ll refund you, no questions asked.

Some more student feedback