Bootcamp is currently closed for enrollment. Next intake in Q3 2021.
LEARN TO TRADE a portfolio of low-touch, rules-based, quant trading strategies, in 6 weeks.
as featured by:
The Financial Hacker
Here's James explaining what Trade like a Quant bootcamp is going to teach you and why this will change your trading approach for the better...
Successful trading is HARD.
Every trader starts with a lack of respect for how hard it is to make consistent trading profits.
They jump from idea to idea. They overcomplicate things. They pass over high-probability edges in favor of heroic ideas that are unlikely to pay out.
In this 6 week course, you'll learn a simple, high-probability, quantitative approach to trading that can work for you, the non-professional trader.
Your trainers, James and Kris, will guide you step-by-step through the process of setting up a portfolio of 3 low-touch, rules-based trading strategies.
These are simple strategies based on economically-sensible, quantifiable market edges.
In this 6 week bootcamp, you will learn:
This is our simplest, most practical quant trading course to date.
We concentrate on the simple things that work: the things that turn money into more money.
Part-time trading for long-term success.
Trade like a Quant is a program aimed unashamedly at the part-time retail trader.
You'll learn "the simple stuff you can do that works." No obfuscation. No jargon. No complicated math. No bullsh!t.
You don't need to be a math genius, rock star coder, or experienced trader to make money in the markets.
- You need the commitment to concentrate on the simple things that work.
- And you need the discipline to stay on the straight and narrow, and not get distracted by shiny toys.
Trade Like a Quant Bootcamp will keep you on a straight-and-narrow path.
Learn how the game really works, then play it right
Here's an overview of what you'll learn in bootcamp...
The trading strategies we'll teach you will set you off on the right foot.
But what we really want you take away from the course are:
- A realistic understanding of the nature of the market (a highly efficient machine)
- A strategy for exploiting it for profit
- A set of simple tactics and tools you can use to realize that strategy.
As we build out your portfolio you'll learn:
- how to think about the structure of the market and its players
- how (not) to lose money
- how to think about "edge" and where to find it
- how to identify "stonkingly obvious high-probability edges": the foundations you can build your trading on top of
- how to spot inefficiencies created by heavily constrained traders
- how to spot inefficiencies created by traders whose incentives are not aligned with maximizing profit
- how to to spot "win-win" opportunities for profit that are likely to persist
- how to spot the least competitive opportunities for trading market inefficiencies - games you can win at
- how to model effects carefully and robustly - rather than ending up in "the backtest cycle of doom"
- how to harness market edges in the simplest, most effective way: "optimizing" for an uncertain future rather than over-optimizing for the past
- how to size positions like a quant
- how to assemble, manage and run a portfolio of low-touch rules based trading strategies.
We'll give you everything you need. Just bring an open mind and some enthusiasm.
Join the Waitlist for our next Bootcamp Intake
Here's what some of our past students have to say about their Robot Wealth bootcamp experience...
Is this Course for You?
Trade like a Quant is for anyone who is serious about capturing financial market returns.
It's about making money in the most effective way possible - not LARPing around with marginal stuff, drawing lines on charts, or messing about with quant vanity projects.
You'll focus on high-probability edges that can be traded by anyone. We aim the course at the part-time trader - but the techniques are applicable whether you want to trade part-time, full-time, or get a job in finance or trading.
Being able to see the market for what it is, and make money out of it is a superpower.
We are full-time quant traders, but we don't expect you to be.
The techniques you'll learn are those we've discovered through decades of quant analysis and trading. It's sophisticated, but it's also simple.
This is stuff you can apply:
- if you have a full-time job
- if you've never written a line of code in your life (though we assume you can use Excel)
- if math terrifies you
- if you've never traded before.
All we ask is you put a few hours aside each week and are open-minded and serious about what really works in the markets.
You're not going to learn feel-good platitudes or hifalutin math concepts here.
What is important and what makes money isn't always what people expect. And it's often not what people WANT it to be. It's not about "picking a trading style that matches your personality" or "cutting loses short and letting your winners run". And it's not about the latest and greatest machine learning algorithm or quant finance technique either.
What makes money in the market is exploiting real edges in a simple, robust, consistent manner.
That's what you'll learn in this course. It's not a course in trader psychology or mathematical finance. It's about finding and exploiting real edges in the highest probability way possible.
By the time you finish the course, you'll have all the tools and techniques to be able to do this yourself.
Join the Waitlist for our next Bootcamp Intake
What's Included? Where Does It All Happen?
Trade like a Quant is a fully-supported learning experience, with live support from the RW team.
6 Weekly Course Modules
At the start of each week, a new module will be released. Each module consists of:
- Live Video
- Slide-Based Lectures
- Written content
- Tools and Assignments for the Week.
Weekly Live Webinars and Workshops
On the first day of Bootcamp we'll jump on Zoom together, say hello, introduce ourselves and set expectations for the next six weeks.
We run a weekly content review webinar and Q&A session. We review the essentials of the week's lessons and stay on the call until we've answered any questions you have.
These webinars usually run for about 2 hours - but everything you need to know happens in the first hour, and you're free to jump off at anytime.
Don't worry if you can't attend every week. The calls are all recorded and made available a few hours later - along with any accompanying slides or other material.
The weekly webinar covers the essentials you need to keep up.
Even if you can't make it through all the course material and assignments each week, if you attend (or watch the replay) every week - you'll be able to keep up.
Vibrant Slack Channel for Real Time Discussion
You'll be invited to join our dedicated private Slack Workspace.
This is where you'll connect with your fellow Bootcampers, as well as seasoned RW Pro members, who have been working with us for a while.
On Slack, you can discuss the course content (or anything else to do with trading) with us in real-time.
We're online all the time, and our members are available 24/7. There's a whole team helping you out.
More testimonials from past Bootcampers...
Here's what you'll learn. The Complete Curriculum.
Here's a summary of what we explore over the 6 weeks of Bootcamp...
0
Enrollment and Initiation
If you're an early enroller, you'll have immediate access to the Slack community. So introduce yourself, say hello, and spark up any discussion with us and the team.
You'll also have access to bonus background material from previous Robot Wealth courses, which you can review at your leisure.
1
Week 1: Seeing the Market for What It Really Is
In this module, you'll build up a model of the market as it really is. (Rather than what you'd like it to be!)
Then, together, we'll build up a game plan for success as a retail trader.
We'll ask questions about the structure of the market and its actors, and we'll build up a simple model. This insight allows us to define our core strategy to extract market returns.
By the end of Week 1, you'll have a good mental model of the market, and a realistic game plan for your trading portfolio.
2
Week 2: Stonkingly Obvious High-Probability Edges
If you start a business venture, it's clear you need an obvious, reliable way to make money.
"I'm smart and hard-working" is not a business case.
You need a stonkingly obvious way to get paid.
We want business cases that stack up. Something a 5 year old might believe would make money.
So we look at successful trading approaches of the past and present for clues.
We look at market-making, ETF arbitrage, commodity carry, trend-following, pairs trading, risk premia harvesting, crypto basis arb, and more.
We'll put together a very simple low-frequency risk-premia harvesting strategy.
It uses the predictable nature of volatility to manage asset and portfolio volatility.
This can be traded using US ETFs, UCITS ETFs or futures contracts.
It forms the base of our portfolio: a stonkingly obvious high-probability edge that you can believe in.
We close the week with a discussion on how to not screw up your best edges by overcomplicating them.
By the end of week 2, you'll have implemented the bottom of the pyramid. You'll have a "stonkingly obvious high-probability edge" you can be confident about.
3
Week 3: Inefficiencies and Where to Find Them
Now you've got a "stonkingly obvious high-probability" edge in the bag. We can start looking at slightly more competitive games which exploit market inefficiencies.
Your risk premia harvesting strategy is "win-win". Nobody needs to "lose out" for you to harness excess returns there. That's why we can believe in it.
Exploiting market inefficiencies is "win-lose", at least if you think about expected returns. Your excess returns come from "buying from someone too cheap". Or "selling to someone too expensive". Someone loses out.
So how do we do find these opportunities?
And how do we make sure we are the ones that get the opportunity to trade these inefficiencies? Given there are are more sophisticated, faster players trying to do the same thing?
These are the questions we'll explore together in this module.
By the end of week 3, you'll have a good idea of what an exploitable market edge really looks like.
You'll have a systematic process for finding exploitable edges. No more will you be stuck in the retail trader "Backtest Cycle of Doom" loop - trying random stuff and hoping it works.
4
Week 4: An Ensemble of Strategies to Exploit Flow Effects
This week, you'll look at three simple trading strategies which exploit large fund trading flows around the turn of the month.
As always, you'll start by thinking about the structure of the market and the players in it.
So we look to exploit these effects in the simplest way possible. Whilst being mindful that every time we trade we lose a little bit of money (The Mortal Sin of Trading Too Much.)
We'll show you how we designed three simple trading strategies to trade these edges. When you combine the strategies, the whole can be greater than the sum of their parts.
We'll conclude Week 4 with a discussion on some of the gritty realities of trading. And the experience of trading under conditions of massive uncertainty.
In Week 1 we played with random data and observed what the experience of trading with a known edge felt like. Now we add the uncertainty of never really knowing if we have an edge.
We'll discuss how to deal with this uncertainty, both practically and emotionally.
Click image to read twitter thread and learn more
Practically, you'll learn it is crucial to understand the effect you are harnessing. You'll set up simple analytics to track the drivers of those effects. This helps you not to be dependent on noisy decaying P&L to know when to adapt or pull a strategy.
Emotionally, you'll explore random data and simulations to start to "feel the randomness in your bones". You don't want to be "Fooled by Randomness" into making rash decisions
By the end of Week 4 you'll have:
- a good understanding of what inefficiencies you can exploit look like.
- a good process for finding them, and exploiting them
- realistic expectations of the experience of trading a systematic strategy.
You'll now have implemented a set of strategies in the next tier up on the pyramid.
5
Week 5: Time-Varying Risk Premia and a Volatility Basis Trading Strategy
In Week 5, you'll be adding a new strategy to your portfolio that straddles the two layers of the pyramid.
This simple strategy exploits the time-varying volatility risk premium. It's a low-frequency strategy which can be traded using VIX ETPs or (micro) VIX futures.
By the end of week 5 you'll:
- understand the time series properties of volatility
- understand the futures basis and "cash and carry" arbitrage
- understand basis effects with a non-tradeable underlying like VIX
- see how to model a time-varying risk premium
- see how you can use this model to build a simple VIX ETP trading strategy.
6
Week 6: Portfolio Zen and The Fine Art of Sitting on Your Hands
Week 6 is when it all comes together.
This week you’ll learn a sensible, quantitative approach to portfolio management.
You'll learn how to put simple trading strategies together to create a high-performing portfolio.
You can create extraordinary results at the portfolio level from many noisy strategies using "ensemble" methods.
Or, as we like to say, “Trading More S**t”.
By the end of week 6 you'll understand:
- a system for thinking about portfolio construction, both practically and emotionally
- how to set portfolio management objectives
- how to set strategy-level volatility targets
- how to size strategies in a portfolio
- how to track and adjust strategy contributions
- what to do when things get weird
- how to chill out and "Trade More S**t"
You won't be left with your hands waving in the air.
We’ll show you exactly how to manage the three strategies we’ve been through together.
And you will know what you should do with your next addition to your systematic trading portfolio.
We finish the course with a discussion of what's next, and the reassurance that "There Will Always Be More Trades".
The trader needs to balance confidence and humility.
You must never pretend that trading is not hard. You must never think you’ve got it all figured out.
A certain amount of anxiety that you are losing your edge is appropriate.
But you must be confident in your ability to find new trades.
You are smart.
You have good tools.
You have solid strategies.
You have a solid approach to the markets.
You have examples of good, quick, pragmatic research.
You have tried-and-tested strategy frameworks.
You have realistic expectations about the Mayhem.
You have a team of people who will help you and share ideas.
There will always be new trades and new ideas.
You just need to stay relaxed, think clearly, don’t get greedy, stay true to the fundamentals, and generously give your time to others.
Join the Waitlist for Bootcamp
Meet your Instructors
James Hodges
Head Trader and Chairman of RW Slack
"I’ve traded every day for the last 20 years. I spent the first 10 in institutional finance and tech, then founded a data analytics and quant prop trading organization in New Zealand, trading futures spreads and equity volatility. I'm currently setting up a crypto trading desk. I work in the RW community every day, mentoring traders and helping them turn ideas ideas into profitable trades."
Kris Longmore
Founder of Robot Wealth
"After a 10-year engineering career, I became a hedge fund quant and later consulted with Asia-Pacific’s biggest fund managers on AI and ML before settling in to quant prop trading. Working with the RW community brings me an immense amount of satisfaction."
Here's what your teammates are saying about Bootcamp
Minsheng W
Member since April 2017
"It would take years to grasp these concepts via books and coding...."
"Bootcamp is a live trading algo development workshop. If I were to read books and learn to code by myself, it would take years to grasp the concepts that are presented in the Bootcamp. For example, we learn about "parameter space", the steps of developing strategies or not to over rely on the backtest results.
Kris and James are showing us how professional quants and traders develop their strategies and both are not hiding any tricks that make money in this Bootcamp. Retail trading is tough and I am glad I participated this Bootcamp so that my learning has accelerated. "
Lee G
Member since August 2018
"It's like working at a quant hedge fund....."
"RW Bootcamps are the best thing going in trade education I have found. Going through the whole process start to finish lets you get a real feel for what goes into a successful strategy. Plus you get to have team generated code at the end that is better than what any of us could do on our own!
It's like working at a quant hedge fund if you could use the code yourself! Highly recommend Robot Wealth to anyone looking to put time into developing this skill set!"
Georg N
Member since December 2018
"Bootcamp is an amazing ride that brought my trading skills to the next level"
"My understanding of how to theorize, research, test and develop new trading strategies has advanced tremendously – in any market. I learned a lot of new stuff from our Robots in Chief as well as from other dedicated and talented members, and I feel much more confident in developing my own ideas both in R and directly in Zorro.
This also inspired me to put together a trading framework that let's trade multiple strategies in one Zorro script, which is a powerful tool that can potentially save trading costs (one of the few really certain outcomes you can and should try to control when embracing the mayhem). All in all this Bootcamp was an amazing ride that brought my trading skills to the next level!"
Just a few of the comments taken directly from some of our 400+ past Bootcamp participants....
"Trading is hard, but stick with the guidance of this community and you'll make it..."
"If you're coming from a retail background then buckle up. Trading is tough and you're likely unaware of what real trading is. You may also be unaware just how much easier it is having a community of pros and like James and kris on hand practically 24/7.
I went from getting scammed by FX signal providers to trading many FX alphas built by us in the community.
Trading is complex, involving multiple disciplines, but stick with the guidance of the community and you'll make it."
Karl
Member since June 2019
"Trading is the hardest game in the world but, thankfully I don't have to take on the challenge alone. With a community of 300+ highly motivated and intelligent members, you get to develop trading strategies relying on quantitative research techniques that professionals use.
Joining Robot Wealth has not only made me a better trader but, a better data scientist as well."
Ajet
Member since November 2019
"Bootcamp is a full-frontal introduction to systematic trading. You won't find this anywhere else without spending years trawling through scientific and mathematical papers.
Kris and James are welcoming, inclusive, fun and literally happy to share their lifetime's of work."
Rich
Member since November 2019
Bootcamp feedback directly from participants
Even more comments lifted straight from our Slack community
The rest of your team are ready to collaborate and share their passion for trading together — let's get started....
If you have any pre-purchase questions about RW Pro, we are happy to help. Email us at [email protected]
Frequently Asked Questions (click to open)
Can I see the whole Bootcamp curriculum?
I'm a trading beginner, can I still join?
I'm not a skilled coder, will I struggle to participate?
I'm a discretionary trader, is this for me?
I struggle for free time, can I still join Bootcamp?
Will I get all the training at once or is it drip fed?
What kind of support will I get?
Do I need a lot of starting capital to join?
But I don't have an expensive trading setup?
Where will I get the data I need for research?
How is the course taught?
Can I continue with Robot Wealth after Bootcamp?
How is this Bootcamp different to those we've run previously?
What are the next steps for my trading after Bootcamp?
Can you describe what other bootcamps/courses are available and their enrolment dates?
What is RW Pro/The Lab? Does it include other courses?
Will we be using Zorro in this course? Can you help me learn Zorro?
I'm already an experienced trader, can I join RW Pro directly?
You guys are based down under. I'm in Europe or the US. Will I be able to participate?
As far as I understand you use backtesting and other algorithms to find trading opportunities?
I'm a non-native English speaker and am unsure if I can participate effectively.
Can you give some statistics around the performance of the Bootcamp strategies?
What instruments do you trade in your own trading operations?
Join the Waitlist for Bootcamp