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.