This story was originally published on HackerNoon at: https://hackernoon.com/why-expected-value-is-not-enough-in-production-trading-systems.
Positive expected value isn’t enough. Why real trading systems fail without risk control, time-horizon awareness, and survival-first optimization.
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Expected value optimization fails in production because it ignores the path to profitability—our system had positive EV but bled capital through occasional wins followed by persistent small losses. We fixed it by implementing CVaR constraints, fractional Kelly position sizing (25% of theoretical), and robust optimization that assumes our model is wrong, trading lower theoretical returns for survival and consistent compounding.