Better System Trader

Richard Metzger from Quantsys.net joins us to discuss how to combine algos using state-based market design techniques for more consistent trading performance, including: Why it's important to be sceptical of your algos, The main causes of poor algo performance and how state-based market design can address these issues, How to define market states into "buckets" and why you should keep them simple, Combining state-based algos to create a system, plus Adjusting inputs for market states, combining strategies in Tradestation, market states vs regime filters, and much more! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Mandi Pour Rafsendjani from High Performance Trading joins us to discuss tips and techniques to perform like a world champion, even under times of stress and uncertainty, including: The 2 types of fears that lead to stress in trading, Self-image and accelerating trading performance, The 3 different areas to look at when dealing with stress, "Protective Pessimism" and positive vs negative thinking, The "3M's" to check when a strategy stops working, The "Queens Gambit" strategy to performance improvement, plus How to recover from larger drawdowns, overtrading, Wim Hof and yoga, self-talk, mindset and why the market is like an "all you can eat" buffet you can keep going back to – yum! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

David Bean from Capstone Trading Systems joins us to share tips and techniques to manage multiple trading strategies, including: When to start trading a strategy live (the answer may not be what you think!), Why you should learn to love "ugly equity curves", Watching the markets for trading ideas, Identifying patterns and cycles in portfolio drawdown, Why you should consider correlation based on methodology instead of typical correlation measurements, plus Patterns vs optimization, single idea strategies, market truths, retesting failed patterns, low frequency trading strategies and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Adam Grimes from Talon Advisors discusses why trading can be so challenging and what to do about it, including: Why it can be so hard to learn from the markets, The dangers of doing stupid things in the markets that generate a good outcome, Random price movements and finding more predictable moments, Why having success outside of the markets doesn't guarantee you'll be a good trader, Trading psychology and interacting with randomness, Adapting to uncertainty and mispricing risk, Deliberate practise, Algo vs discretionary trading, when to stop trading a system, new events, out of sample date, how far to backtest and forward test before going live and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Algorithmic trader Kevin Davey discusses the sneaky tactics trading scammers use to trick people and how you can spot a fraud and protect yourself, including: How to check if testimonials are real, Some simple ways to tell if a trader really is trading live as they claim, How to spot fake trading strategies, Trading gurus who report unrealistic returns and flaunt fake wealth, Websites you can use to check if trading educators are scammers, Why teach if you can trade, Fake trendlines and cherry-picked examples for books, Plus, Paypal refunds, money back guarantees, audited trading records, realistic rates of return, reputable trading educators, the old hedge fund trader/caravan park scam, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

World Cup Trading Championship runner-up Scott Welsh joins us to discuss how "breaking the rules" and doing the opposite of "traditional" trading approaches can lead to higher returns, including: "Burning the ships" and how limiting beliefs are hurting traders, Why traders should "start from the end" and work backwards, Why it's good to see losing in your trading, The 80/20 rule and why "getting the star" beats diversification, How to achieve real-life trading that's better than the backtest, Selection bias - is it really so bad? Why you should say "screw you" to people who tell you that you can't do it, Plus, doing the opposite to conventional trading wisdom, breaking the rules with indicators, strategies that never break, trading platforms, beating buy and hold, small profit targets, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Numerical Computing specialist and author Timothy Masters joins us (in his only ever interview) to discuss trading strategy development and validation techniques, including: Why trading strategies fall apart in live trading, How luck impacts trading strategy results and the impact of selecting the 'best' trading system, Why trades in an out of sample dataset are NOT representative of future trades, 3 ways to use Monte Carlo Permutation tests in trading strategy development to avoid overfitting, evaluate strategy robustness and assess the quality of your strategy development process, The danger of using out of sample trades to compute the probability of drawdowns, Entropy and information of indicators and why it's important to strategy development, How stationarity really impacts trading strategies and what strategy developers can do about it, Using Walk Forward to determine how robust a strategy is in the market, Incomplete Beta Distribution to track strategy deterioration, Bootstrapping, granular Profit Factor, the predictive ability of technical indicators, counter-trend trading and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Breakout trading specialist and Hedge Fund manager Tomas Nesnidal joins us to discuss how to increase the returns of trading strategies using "Performance Qualifiers" while also managing risk, including: What is Dynamic Position Sizing (DPS) and how can it improve risk-adjusted returns, How Dynamic Position Sizing is different to classical position sizing (and why DPS is better), Why it's important for traders to connect position size with what's going on in the markets, instead of just their equity curve, The 5 groups of Performance Qualifiers and how to use them to identify the probabilities of future trades, Why using filters to improve trading strategies can be dangerous (and DPS is a much better option instead), Plus, Dynamic Position Sizing and risk management, Optimal-f and older position sizing techniques, Dynamic Position Sizing for stocks, forex and other markets, why it's important for traders to try new concepts, and much more. ► Download the free DPS ebook at https://dpstradingtechnique.com or discover more from Tomas at https://systemsontheroad.com Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Unknown market wizard Marsten Parker joins us to share how he overcame broken strategies and adapted his trading to deliver a 20-year track record most traders would envy, including: Being featured in the "Unknown Market Wizards" book by Jack Schwager, The impacts of a 45% drawdown and how Marsten got back into trading, How to use a system stop to protect your trading account from large losses, Why it's important to understand why a strategy works, Mean Reversion short strategies, why they're dangerous and how to mitigate some of the risk, How to detect and protect yourself from a strategy that's broken, Uncertainty in the market and the future performance of strategies, Equity curve trading, market speed, diversified strategies, tracking old strategies, indicators, market regimes and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

David Steets from Systematic Individual Investor joins us to discuss how to map market probabilities and identify high probability markets using "edge stacking" techniques, including: The importance of mapping market probabilities, How to identify if something really contains an edge, Blending return probabilities across buckets to create a probability map, Classifying markets over multiple timeframes, How to confirm which edges are currently relevant, Using both technical and fundamental in models, The reliability of edges over time, Managing conflicting information and edges, Bear market signals, integrating discretion, weighting edges, VIX term structure, "anti-edges" and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

On this BST live show, Ivan from Ivanhoff Capital joins us to discuss "Short-term swing trading techniques". Here are some of the topics you'll discover in this episode: The 2 most important factors in swing trading, Why short-term trading is better than longer-term trading, Measuring market environment and detecting changes, How to find the hot sectors in the market, Shorting stocks and adapting to market corrections and downtrends, Swing trading in choppy markets, Stacking the odds in your favour, High conviction setups, breakouts vs dips, protecting profits, trailing stops, time stops, swing trading psychology and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

On this BST live show, Rob Carver from systematicmoney.org joins us to discuss "3 ways traders kill trading strategies". Here are just some of the topics you'll discover in this episode: What can go wrong with strategies in live trading, The impact of model complexity on prediction error, (and are simple models really better than more complicated ones - the answer may surprise you!), The dangers of overstated backtest performance, The impact of historic costs on backtest results, The 3 types of overfitting, including 1 that most traders don't even realise they're doing, and how to reduce their impact on your trading models, Strategy robustness and letting data define complexity, The overfitting "levels of sin", Correcting for the "multiple testing problem", Fitting metrics, sample size, data quality, prediction error and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

On this episode of BST Live, Doc Ahrens from Trendline Dynamics joins us to discuss "Effective techniques to identify trends", including: The Macro-trend Analyzer indicator and 3 ways to use moving averages for macro trend analysis, Why it's important to have simple trading solutions and what failures in aerospace can teach us about trading strategies, Studies that conclude technical indicators don't work, Using visual confirmation to understand indicator reaction to market scenarios, The 3 types of support and resistance, How to draw trendlines properly, why it's impossible to "understand the market", the importance of persistence in trading and loads more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

So, the verdict is in… Afrotechmods says: "I think this is the most informative guest you have ever had! Thank you both." What am I talking about? On this episode of BST Live, Stefan Friedrichowski from JFD Bank joined us to discuss "how to build Mean Reversion trading strategies", and it was an absolute cracker! Even if you're not a mean reversion trader, you have to see this one. Here's a small sample of the tips and insights you'll discover: The "alarm signal" that got Stefan interested in Mean Reversion trading, How to determine if a market is good for Mean Reversion or not, How to reduce noise and increase the information content in trading charts, The danger of using a Mean which moves too fast, How the distribution of 2 bar combinations gives clues about potential trading edges, Adjusting the Mean length based on the timeframe of the chart, Stop-loss vs take profit size, trading without a stop loss, degrees of freedom, statistical significance, sample size, entries, exits, and loads more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Ever wondered how to turn $10k into $100k (or more) in just 2 years (or less)? Many traders have, especially early in their careers… But how do professional traders achieve superior returns while also protecting capital. On this week's episode of BST Live, Laurent Bernut from Alpha Secure Capital joined us to discuss "Superior returns from superior risk management", and a new approach to risk management where you can put risk appetite on autopilot, protect capital and achieve superior returns. Here are just some of the tips you'll discover: How to turn 10k into 1 million (or more) in just 2 years..., How unrealistic trading expectations set you up for failure, What is "superior" risk management and why investors are like teenage girls, Concavity and Convexity Oscillators for dynamic risk management, Position sizing with small accounts, Why you should let the market dictate the risk for you, How to judge the tradability of a strategy, plus Emotional capital vs financial capital and which is more critical, Risk management after long periods of underperformance, mean reversion vs trend following, the problem with pyramiding into positions and MUCH more. To hear all about it, head on over to bettersystemtrader.com/177 now to watch along or check in with your favourite podcast app if you like to listen. Happy trading! Andrew. PS. Laurent even turned the tables and asked me a question on why I do Better System Trader. Check out my response at bettersystemtrader.com/177 Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

With 2020 coming to a close, we've got a great opportunity to stop for a breather (phew!), look at some of the craziness that has happened this year, and identify how we can use those insights to improve our trading even more in the future. On this episode of BST Live Mike Grech from Quantopolis.com joins us to discuss 2020 and how we can better deal with market uncertainty. Here are just some of the tips you'll discover: Why 2020 has produced 5 years of market action in 1 year, How this year has produced outsized returns for some trading styles and what could happen next, Understanding your strategy, how it reacts to markets and when to stop trading it, The future impacts of 2020 on backtesting, re-optimization and quant trading, What could crash an overvalues stockmarket if a global pandemic can't, Tail-risk hedging during volatility environments, The drawbacks and dangers of using indicators in trading, plus… The psychology of gains and losses, the information we don't see as traders, the best risk management tool you can possibly have, and MUCH more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

"Randomness has the greatest negative impact on single entry trading strategies." – Brian Miller (Optimized Trading). In this new episode of BST Live, Brian Miller from Optimized Trading joins us to discuss "3 under-utilized techniques to build dramatically better trading strategies". Brian shared some unique ideas for building (and improving) trading strategies. Here are just some of the tips you'll discover: Basic market classifications most traders use (that miss the complete picture), Designing models for specific market classifications Managing trades as market classifications change, How to get started building multi-structured strategies, Matching the strategy style to the market, Multi-value, multi-entry strategies, and diversification, Adaptive money management using market classifications, plus… Trade frequency, trending vs mean reverting, intelligent allocation, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

"There are literally hundreds of statistically valid patterns in every market." – Scott Andrews (Investiquant). So, where are they hiding out, how can we find them and how can we determine the patterns are actually valid and not just random noise in the market? In this new episode of BST Live, Scott Andrews from Investiquant joins us to discuss how to find statistical edges to improve your trading. Here are just some of the tips you'll discover: How to find potential edges and which markets are best, Why it's more important to spend time watching and studying the market than actually trading it, The "3 C's rule" to separate genuine signals from the noise, How long can pattern edges actually last and do dead edges ever recover? How to track the health of an edge using t-score, Using "traditional" indicators in patterns, How to deal with drawdowns (and possibly the trading quote of the year!), The "Speed Bump Rule" to manage drawdowns, plus… Allocating capital, edges in stocks, building pattern libraries, ensembles vs patterns, day trading edges, context, sample size, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Is the trend REALLY your friend? And if so, why do so many trend traders fail? Global futures trader Brent Penfold joins us to discuss trend trading tactics, including: • Why trend trading is so difficult for traders, • Why traders should be careful using indicators, • How to overcome challenging periods in trend trading, • The surprising robustness of really old strategies, • Why bright people struggle in the markets, • Drawdown, risk, position-sizing, volatility cycles, data mining, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Quant Trader Alan Clement from Helix Trader discusses momentum trading & strategies, including: Why momentum trading is so popular and how it works, What makes a good trend indicator and the 4 best indicators to identify trends, Why the moving average is not a good trend indicator, How to rank stocks by momentum and how many momentum stocks to hold in a portfolio, The danger of stops and using momentum for exits instead, How dual momentum protects during Bear markets and market crashes, Filtering out false signals in indicators, Plus, market regimes, shorting weak stocks, position sizing, and much more! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

With the US elections just days away, traders are thinking about how the markets may react to whatever news the elections may bring. Will we see a big selloff, wild swings in price, and huge spikes in volatility? Or do the markets typically deliver something else around election time? In this episode of BST Live, Perry Kaufman from Kaufman Signals joins us to discuss how to survive market selloffs, including: Historical returns around election days since 1924, The 2 types of prices shocks and the best approach to handling them, The link between stock price and percentage change and why you should avoid trading low priced stocks, Should traders hedge to reduce risk, The dangers of Price Shocks on backtesting results (and how to avoid them), How to determine the volatility level where returns are no longer worth the risk, Plus, volatility parity, rebalancing, portfolio volatility, and much more! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Ever had a strategy that looked like it was broken and wondered if you should stop trading it or not? Strategy failure (or periods of poor performance) are just a part of trading, but how you deal with it can have a HA-YUGE impact on your overall results… so how do you detect when a strategy is failing? How do you work out if you should stop trading it or just give it some more time? In this episode of BST Live, trading champion Kevin Davey joins us to discuss how to detect when a strategy is failing, including: • Why looking at a single equity curve is not giving you the full picture, • How to determine the potential ranges of future strategy performance, • Using Statistical Process Control to monitor trading strategies and which metrics are best, • How Probability Cones can give traders a more informed view of strategy performance (and when a strategy could be broken), • What do to when a strategy over-performs (the answer may not be what you think!), • Should you turn a strategy back on if it recovers after extremely poor performance, • How a really good backtest can actually be a predictor of bad performance, • Plus, much more! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Are our roles as traders coming to an end soon? Is AI and ML (that's Machine Learning, not Money Laundering or Meat Loaf…) going to take over the trading world? Trading veteran Bob Pardo from Pardo Capital joins us to discuss these topics plus much more, including: How AI is missing common inputs used by human traders, Modeling the expertise of human traders using Expert Systems, The dangers of using computers to blindly create strategies, Retail edges vs Institutional edges and how private traders can compete, The lifespans of edges (are they getting shorter?), The Dynamic Statistical Profile of strategies and taking strategies offline, Correlations (and how correlation can be a 2-edge sword), Objective functions and when it doesn't matter which one you choose, Using performance feedback and indicators on equity curves, Adaptive trading systems, fitting your process to your objective and much more! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

DSP and Cycles expert John Ehlers, joins us to discuss all things optimization, including: Why optimization is a statistical process and how to assess the results properly (including what to look for at "the 50% line"), How much data you should REALLY use for reoptimization and why many traders use way too much data (and the impact it has on trading strategies), The 3 best fitness functions to use in reoptimization and the dangers of a popular metric that can lead to over trading, What the speed of optimization results can potentially tell you about strategy robustness, The only 2 things that count when assessing a strategy (yup, just 2!), Plus, much more. Also, if you want to discover more of John's Cycles and DSP techniques, John is running his annual workshop for the very last time this year (he's retiring to go fishing and build model aeroplanes). The workshop is run over 4 evenings (US time – Oct 19-23) and it's 100% online so no travel or quarantine required. For more info, visit: http://bettersystemtrader.com/jeworkshop2020 Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

High-performance trading coach Steve Ward from TradeAtYourBest.com discusses: How to find the best opportunities during challenging times, Why shifting perspective is such a critical skill for high-performance, How to overcome internal resistance to become more adaptable, "Learning vs Earning" and how to improve your chances of longevity in trading, How to integrate being flexible with the "follow the system" approach of algo/systematic trading to be better prepared for whatever the market may hold, Key actions traders should be doing right now to prepare for an unknown future in the markets, Plus, many more practical tips to improve trading performance. And if you want even more practical tips on high-performance trading, you should check this one out: For the first time ever, Steve is running the 6-week "Trade At Your Best Trading Psychology Course" to teach private traders (he usually only works with institutional clients) the mindset and mental skills required to succeed in the markets, and close the gap between potential and actual returns. So, if you want to see what knowledge, insights, and techniques Steve reveals to his Insto clients behind closed doors, this could be your only chance. (Have to admit I'm intrigued too…) The program starts next week, you can find more details about the program at http://bettersystemtrader.com/taybcourse Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Nick Radge from TheChartist.com.au discusses how to achieve consistent equity growth using multiple layers of diversification. For more details about The Empowered Trader monthly newsletter, visit http://theempoweredtrader.com Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Cesar Alvarez from AlvarezQuantTrading.com discusses effective Market Regime techniques to improve strategy performance and reduce risk by only trading in the best market conditions. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Details about what's next for BST and the special event being hosted this weekend. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

As I'm sure you've realised, I've taken a break from podcasting for the last year or so. I've been focusing on some other trading projects so I haven't released any new episodes for quite a while, but over that time I've received a lot of messages from traders hungry for more podcast episodes. Has Better System Trader finished? Is it coming back? I have some interesting news to share - take a listen. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

This podcast episode made me think back to the very first computer I bought in my high school days. We're talking about the mid-1980, when computers were still relatively new. Actually, my first computer was a commodore 64 (how good were they!), which my parents bought me, but the first computer I actually bought myself was a pretty serious computer at the time. It cost about 3 or 4 thousand dollars, which back then was quite a bit of money. And this computer only had a fraction of the power that we have in our mobile phones these days, but back then it was one of the fastest you could get. Anyway, this computer had a special switch on the front of the case, it was called the 'Turbo' switch. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but when some programs were running slow, I could flick the turbo switch on and it would accelerate the performance of the computer. And I was thinking, wouldn't it be great if we could have a 'Turbo' switch for trading, where we could just flick the switch and instantly boost our performance? Wouldn't that be awesome? Well, I don't think such a switch exists unfortunately, but there are definitely things we can do to accelerate our performance, and that's exactly what we're discussing today with our special guest and leading performance coach Steve Ward. Steve has over 25 years of teaching, coaching and training experience. He works with traders, fund managers and banking professionals across the globe, helping them to improve their decision making, risk taking and ability to achieve and sustain high performance. Steve's work is focused on delivering evidence-based practical strategies and tactics, and in this podcast episode we discuss a number of performance accelerators in trading. Here's some of the things you'll discover: The key factors that can accelerate trading performance, Why the 'j-curve' is so important for developing traders and how to shortcut the process to profitability, How the best traders manage the short-term discomforts of trading to achieve long-term gains, Why suppressing emotions in trading can be like trying to hold a beachball underwater, and how to improve our behavioural flexibility for higher performance, How situational awareness training used by the US marines can improve our trading abilities, Tips to functioning at our best in a world of hyper distractions, Plus, much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

In this podcast episode we're going to be talking about something incredibly fundamental to traders. It's something we have to do all the time as traders, and it can have such a huge impact on our trading performance. In fact, it doesn't just impact trading, it can impact ALL aspects of our lives. So, what is it? Any ideas? It's decision making. Now I don't need to explain the importance of decision making, it's pretty obvious… I'm sure we've all made good and bad decisions over time and had to live with the consequences, but as traders, what can we do to improve our decision making? Well, in this podcast episode we're joined by special guest Agustin Lebron. Agustin began his career as a trader and researcher at one of the worlds largest market-making firms - Jane Street Capital. Over the years he has traded many different kinds of securities and has created, developed and implemented successful trading strategies. In my chat with Agustin you'll discover: The "laws" traders need to apply to make better decisions, Why you're never really happy with the trades you make and what to do about it, Identifying your "personal edge" and leveraging it in the markets, Why traders need to integrate "storytelling" into their processes, The dangers of traders "mistaking the map for the territory", How to approach a model when it's breaking down, Plus, much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Glad you could join us today for a discussion on what is probably one of the most popular topics in trading, and that is entries and exits. Traders love talking about entries, but the truth is, when you dig deeper and test them out, you might just discover lots of entry and exits techniques either don't actually work very well at all or don't work as well as expected. So, how do traders know what makes a good entry or exit? How do we go about building effective entries and exits for our trading strategies? Well, in this podcast episode we dig deeper into entries and exits with special guest Kevin Davey. Kevin has just released a book on entries and exits, so we're going to dig into that a little and discuss a number of other aspects of entries and exits too, including: What makes a good entry – logic, symmetry, indicators, patterns or something else? How to test the effectiveness of an entry to determine if it's any good, An unexpected way to use entries that could radically improve your trading strategies, The hidden dangers of combining and optimizing exits, A simple technique to determine if you could be optimizing too much, Where to find enough entries and exit ideas to keep you busy for a year, Plus, much, much more. Let's get started with my chat with Kevin on entries and exits. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Our special guest for this episode has done some really interesting work into strategies that manage trading strategies based on their current performance. This can have a huge impact on performance results, but what does it actually mean, how does it work and how can we do it? Well, David Bean from Capstone Trading Systems is joining us to explain exactly that, plus he's going to share a whole lot more, including: Patterns versus indicators, where they fit in a strategy and which works better, Why market regime filters may not be the best approach and an alternative solution that could be better for you, How to really dig deep into understanding how a strategy and market truly works and the benefits of knowing that, How to determine the best time to start trading a strategy and when to stop trading it, How to plan for, manage and even profit from strategy degradation, Plus much more. So, enough of the delays, lets jump right into my chat with David Bean. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

I just want to start by saying happy new year! I know it was a few weeks back, but I hope you've had a good start to the year and I wish you all the best for 2019. Now I'm really excited to be sharing this episode with you for a number of reasons. I think it's very timely considering this is the time of the year where we make new years resolutions. We reflect on where we are and what we want achieve. Perhaps we've set some goals and started achieving some of those, or maybe even broken some of them already. In this episode we're going to be talking about what it takes to be the best, or perhaps I should say YOUR best. We're going to be talking about high performance trading, what it takes to have a successful trading career over the long term. And joining us for this chat is one of the best, Linda Raschke. As I'm sure you know, Linda has experienced a very high level of trading success throughout her career. There aren't too many traders around who can say they've had the level of performance, success and longevity that Linda has had, so she's really an excellent person to discuss this with us today. She's going to share some stories with us, and some valuable trading wisdom which I'm sure you'll find valuable, so let's jump straight into my chat with Linda, hope you enjoy it! Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

With so much focus often on the actual trading strategies or investments, portfolio construction can sometimes become an afterthought… or not even considered. However, as we're going to hear about today, portfolio construction and optimization has the potential for huge increases in wealth... But there are a number of aspects we need to carefully consider if we want to maximise the potential of portfolios. Joining us today as our special guest is Adam Butler, CIO from quantitative asset management company Resolve Asset Management. Adam has published some interesting research on portfolio construction and optimization, and he's even provided a portfolio optimization framework that can guide investors and traders towards the appropriate optimization method. In my discussion with Adam today, you're going to discover: How some traders and investors apply rules to portfolio construction based on a flawed premise, How the 'Portfolio Optimization Machine' framework can guide investors toward the appropriate optimization method, Why some errors in estimates don't have a particularly large impact on portfolio outcome and where the real challenges comes in, The differences in constructing portfolios in stocks versus futures, The multiple dimensions of diversification and how to approach the risks of rebalancing, How to choose the best portfolio construction and optimization technique for you, Plus much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

With recent market stock market actions, talk again is turning to whether this is just another correction. Will the bull market resume or are we in the beginning stages of a bear market? In this episode we have a timely look at the market with Troy Bombardia from investment research firm Fundamental Capital and the website BullMarkets.co. Troy has been working in his family's hedge fund for 10 years now, and applies a unique mix of Fundamentals, Technicals, and Statistics to his trading models. In my discussion with Troy today, you're going to discover: Why Technicals alone can't give an accurate reflection of the long-term market view and what you need to incorporate instead, Why lots of traders that use fundamental analysis are doing it wrong and which fundamentals really drive stock market declines, The difference between a bear market and a "big decline" and the conditions to watch out for in each, Why leading economic indicators are also leading stock market indicators, and how to read them to prepare for potential market changes, What the economic indicators are saying about stock market conditions right now, including when the Bull market could be ending and the final step to watch out for as it unfolds, The importance of reflection in trading, and the 2 key aspects traders need to focus on to always be improving, And much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Joining us today as special guest is Michael Grech from Quantopolis. Mike is a quantitative trader with a background in signal processing and computer modelling, and in our chat you'll discover a number of interesting topics, including: Trading based on assumptions and building portfolios of diversified strategies, Why every trader should have some kind of volatility strategy in their portfolio and how to balance risk vs reward in volatility strategies, Mike's latest book on quantitative investing, How concepts from the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" have applications to traders. Plus, Mike is going to let us in on a project he's currently working on that uses a combination of simple systems and Artificial Intelligence to mimic a human trader and also to calculate market probabilities. We cover a lot in this episode so check out my chat with Michael Grech. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

A common dream sold to traders, especially when they're starting out, is the dream of sitting back on the beach sipping cocktails while our trading systems go to work and make us money. While certain aspects of that dream are possible, for example automated trading, traders still need to do a lot of work to get to that point. We've got to research the markets, find trading edges, do testing and robustness checks, monitor strategies and systems, tweak and adjust where required... It's really not as simple as the dream sounds. But with recent advances in technology, including AI, machine learning and quantum computing, are we close to having fully autonomous trading systems? That is, can systems really learn trading rules themselves, find profitable edges and trade them, while we do sit back on the beach, boat or couch sipping cocktails and counting our money? In this podcast episode we're going to explore how recent advances in technology are impacting the trading space now and where it could be taking us in the future. And to do that we have special guest Dr Tom Starke from AAAQuants. Tom specialises in AI and machine learning solutions and he has some interesting insights to share with us, so let's get started now and jump over now to my chat with Dr Tom Starke. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

In this episode we're going to be talking about the pits. The trading pits may be closed (or most of them are anyway) but there is a lot of history there. There are lots of stories and events that occurred in the pits over the years that we can still learn from today. On this podcast episode we have special guest Damon Pavlatos who has been extensively involved in the commodity and financial futures industry since 1978. He has held Exchange Memberships on the CME, CBOT and Mid America Exchange. Not only did he trade on the floor for himself but he also executed for some of the biggest players around, including Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, Monroe Trout, Toby Crabel and others. In Damons 40+ years of experience he's seen a lot, and he's experienced a lot too. So, in our chat today he's going to share some interesting stories from the floor, and some valuable lessons for traders of all levels of experience too. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Damon are: The crash of '87 – what it was like leading up to, trading through it and how the crash of 2008 was scarier than the crash of 87, One of the biggest causes of traders blowing up their accounts - it may not be what you think, Why volume could be the most important indicator and how order flow 'clues' can impact trading results, Why it so important to 'stay ahead of the curve' and adapt to changes in technology and the markets, Why some types of brokerage firms are dangerous and how to check if they're properly capitalised, And so much more. We cover a lot in this episode so let's jump over now to my chat with Damon Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Ever wonder how the 'other side' trades? I suppose it depends what 'trading world' you live in but in this episode we're exploring 2 different worlds - the institutional world AND the private trading world. And joining us to do that is special guest Petra Zacek. Petra started out in the institutional world and in this episode she shares some interesting stories and lessons about her time there. But now that she's a private trader she's also going to share some insights into trading her own account and the transition from institutional to private trading. Some of the things you'll hear in our chat today are: Why it's important to think outside the box and express your trade idea in different ways, Making the switch from institutional to private trading and the impact her institutional experience has had on her trading today, How the institutional world research ideas, including what private traders are up against and how we can compete, Benefits of collaboration, using algos as an additional filter on top of a setup, how to balance accuracy with win/loss ratio plus a whole lot more. So let's jump over to my chat now with Petra. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Quite often the focus for traders are the technical aspects of trading - indicators, back-testing procedures, robustness checks, statistics, trading platforms, infrastructure etc. All of these aspects can have an impact on trading performance. However, there are other aspects of trading too that often go unrecognised, ignored, and can have a huge impact on our performance no matter how good our strategies are. What are they? Joining us today to discuss high performance trading is Mandi Pour Rafsendjani. Mandi is a trader, speaker and peak performance trading coach who works with independent traders, prop trading firms and hedge funds to improve their trading performance. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Mandi are: The key aspects that set high performing traders apart from everyone else, How traders can identify what's really holding back their performance, Why it's important to have a 'reset button', Two aspects of drawdown and how traders can more effectively manage drawdown, How to strengthen your 'taking-losses' muscle to better handle losses, And much more. So let's jump over now to my chat with Mandi on high performance trading. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

"Backtesting trading strategies does not work!" Got your attention? Maybe you agree with this statement. Perhaps you strongly disagree and you're currently heading out to the backyard to grab your pitchfork. Or maybe you're shaking your head thinking 'what the heck swanny, have you finally lost it man?'. Well, the good news is I haven't lost it (yet). We're going to dive deeper into this statement in the podcast episode today. But first, I'd like to introduce our guest - John Ehlers. John is a friend of the show. He's been a guest multiple times, discussing topics such as cycles, indicators and digital signal processing. In our chat today we're going to tackle robustness and also intraday trading. Some of the things you'll hear on the show today are: The startling differences between intraday and daily timeframes and the critical factors you need to watch out for, Why it's more difficult to predict where market prices are going on an intraday basic compared to daily timeframe, and how you need to think about intraday data differently, We'll be digging deeper into this "Backtesting trading strategies does not work" statement to find out what it means, How to use a simple Genetic Optimization trick to determine the robustness of a strategy How Genetic Optimization can be used to identify suitable ranges for optimization parameters Why short walk forward periods could be better than longer, Plus a whole lot more. So lets jump over to my chat now with John Ehlers. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

As Warren Buffet once said: "the stock market is a manic depressive." The market can be full of euphoria and greed one moment, and switch to fear and panic the next. This can often be a time of danger and high-risk for some traders, but for other traders it's a time of immense opportunity. How? In this podcast episode we're joined by special guest Larry Connors. Larry has over 30 years in the financial markets industry and has been featured on the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Dow Jones, & many others. He has been providing high-quality, data-driven trading research for over 15 years, and I'm sure that many BST listeners have a stack of his books on their bookshelf. I definitely do! In my chat with Larry you'll discover: How human emotions drive the market, and why it's so important to look beyond price charts and indicators to understand what's moving the market, How we can leverage extremes in specific human emotions to create quantifiable and profitable edges, How Larry came up with the idea of publishing his book 'Buy the Fear, Sell the Greed' and what traders can learn from it, 3 simple indicators to quickly judge the mood of the market, How Warren Buffets investment approach to be 'fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful' can also apply to short-term trading, And yes, I'm going to ask Larry about that famous 'Stops hurt' chapter published over 10 years ago that still has people talking today, Plus we cover a whole lot more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

In this podcast episode we're going to be talking about strategy design and different ways to look at the markets, and joining us as our special guests is Rikard Nilsson from Autostock. Rikard trades all different styles and markets, and has even built his own trading platform with some interesting features he's going to share with us. Plus he's going to share some interesting ideas on how he looks at the markets, some of which you may not have heard of before, including: The 'Predictive Average' indicator – how it can be used to indicate potential market behaviours over the following days/weeks and months, Validating strategies across different instruments, Excluding certain parts of the day based on data, Adaptive 'Backtrack Technology' and how to filter trading signals and position sizing dynamically based on past market behaviour, Plus loads more, so let's jump over now to my chat with Rikard Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

A huge part of algorithmic trading is all about stacking the odds in our favour. Finding statistical edges, identifying times when probabilities indicate that market conditions are either favourable for a trade or perhaps unfavourable for a trade. And although probabilities aren't certainties, they can still be an important guides for traders, so joining us as special guest for this episode is Scott Hodson from Probable Trades. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Scott are: How to apply probabilities to trading strategies and why looking at cross-sectional probabilities across multiple dimensions of data can potentially enhance trading results, How a Probability Almanac can help track the performance of a trading strategy over certain time periods, Why it can sometimes pay to have a fundamental knowledge of the stocks you're buying instead of just blindly following trading signals, How analysing risk to reward of past trades can help to determine at what point taking more risk is not beneficial, Why you need to care for your 'emotional capital, just as much as your 'trading capital', A specific type of stop that can reduce the length and size of drawdowns, Shorting strategies as a hedge to smooth out the equity curve and reduce drawdowns, And much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

In this episode we're going to be talking about holey strategies and portfolios. Now, when I say "holey" I'm not talking about religion, divine intervention, holy grails or anything like that, although we could probably apply todays topics to those type of strategies that need divine intervention (and who hasn't had a strategy like that at some point?). No, when I say "holey" I mean something with a hole in it, like a bucket that has a hole in the bottom. When you put water or some other liquid into that bucket, obviously it starts leaking, reducing the performance of that bucket and today we'll be discussing holes in trading strategies and portfolios that could be reducing trading performance. Joining us as special guest for this episode is Ryan Moffett from Blackpier Capital. Ryan has spent the last 12 years specializing in designing and trading robust strategies, working with and being mentored by traders out of the CBOE as well as hedge fund managers out of New York and California. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Ryan are: Why manual backtesting can be more beneficial than automated testing, How 'deliberate practise' can be used in the strategy creation process to get a deep understanding of a strategy, How to find holes in a trading strategy that could punish your trading performance, The hole in people's portfolios and how allocating a small portion to 'the 4th asset class' can be a good hedge for a portfolio when other markets aren't doing too well, Plus a hole lot more... (see what I did there!) Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Confidence is a powerful thing – when people have it they can do some pretty amazing things, but on the opposite side, a lack of confidence can be debilitating too, and for traders it can have some similar effects, especially when the performance of a strategy starts to suffer and a trader has money on the line. So, what can we do about this? How can we have more confidence in the strategies that we build and trade? Confidence that we've built strategies that are robust. Confidence to continue trading strategies during the periods when strategy performance may be struggling. Our special guest for this episode is Adrian Reid from Enlightened Stock Trading, and in our chat Adrian is going to enlighten us on building trading strategies that we can have confidence in. We're not just going to talk about trading psychology here, but Adrian will be sharing practical aspects of system design and validation, that can give us more confidence in the strategies that we create and trade live. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Adrian are: The 5 key areas traders must address to build confidence in a trading system, Significance testing - why it's important to strip a strategy down to just the core components and how to determine which components are really driving performance, Why the transition from backtesting a strategy to trading it live can be a difficult and uncertain one, and the preparation steps you need to take to make the transition smooth, How a technique called 'start-date stepping' can provide valuable insights into how a strategy could really perform in live trading, Plus, performance profiling across market conditions, sensitivity testing, why traders lose discipline, testing strategy rules in reverse, and much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

Predictive modelling is used in many aspects of our lives today.. in the banking and insurance industries to assess the risks and behaviours of customers… in marketing to anticipate customer purchasing behaviours… in meteorology to forecast the weather… in fact there are too many applications to list here but predictive modelling has the potential to be applied pretty much anywhere, even in the markets. Now you may be saying 'wait, I'm not in the business of predicting, my trading is all reactive, I don't predict, I just follow the markets'. I'm not going to go into that argument today but before you make any decisions or judgements about this episode I invite you to take a listen because we discuss the predictability of indicators, and some of the things you'll hear in our chat about indicators are very interesting, no matter how you use them in your own trading. Our guest for this episode is John MacLeod. John has a background in using Predictive Modelling, working as a consultant to develop predictive models in consumer banking and mass marketing, and has applied this expertise to the stockmarkets as well. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with John are: Predictive modelling – what it is and how can it be used in trading to select stocks that may be setup for a big move, Using indicators as predictors and 3 major conclusions John has made by analyzing the predictability of 160 indicators – these results may surprise you! The accuracy of predictive modelling, which factors can impact accuracy and the easiest time periods to produce high accuracy predictions, How data derived from indicators can actually be more effective as predictors then the indicators themselves, Plus much more. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

I think it's pretty safe to say we've had some interesting times in the markets so far this year. There has been an increase in uncertainty, higher volatility and even outside of the markets there have been a number of events that seem to be impacting the markets. Some traders may be seeing the current market environment as riskier than it has been in the recent past, while other traders may be enjoying the increased opportunity, but whichever way you look at it, there is something that all traders need to consider if they want to last a long time in this business, and that is how to protect capital through proper risk management. The guest on the show this episode is risk management expert Aaron Brown, who has worked for JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and even spent 10 years as risk manager for quant based hedge fund AQR. In our chat today we're going to cover some interesting and practical aspects of Risk and Risk Management, and how we can plan for and protect ourselves, which you may find incredibly timely given recent market developments. Some of the things you'll discover in my chat with Aaron are: The biggest misconception about risk and how traders should really be looking at risk instead, Why low volatility environments can be riskier than high volatility environments, One of the biggest risks to the markets that can impact everyone and can be hard to measure and how to plan for it, How traders should approach drawdown management, Why correlations are 'mythical' and the right way to think about financial markets, Risks in the markets today Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.

One of the biggest issues we have as systematic and algorithmic traders is that the markets are dynamic and constantly changing, however its quite common to build trading strategies that are static and are designed to take advantage of an optimal set of conditions which don't actually last very long, if at all. This can cause periods of good and poor performance as trading strategies fall in and out of sync with the markets, so it makes logical sense to try including some adaptive elements into trading strategies to help them adjust better to the markets as they change. Our guest for this episode is Jane Fox, aka Trader Janie. Jane runs the website Quantitrader, and is here to share some of the techniques she uses to add dynamic abilities to her trading strategies, plus we discuss some other important topics too, including: The top 3 components of trading strategies and how adding adaptability to these components can improve a trading strategy, Why static stop losses could be hurting your trading performance and some techniques Janie uses to overcome these issues, How a 'circuit breaker' can save your trading account when things turn ugly, A dynamic position sizing technique Jane uses to increase returns while also reducing drawdowns, Plus a whole lot more so let's get started with my chat with Trader Janie. Disclaimer: Trading in the financial markets involves a substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for everyone. All content produced by Better System Trader is for informational or educational purposes only and does not constitute trading or investment advice. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.