Five Years of Data: Proving the Real Edge in a Pullback Trading Tool
There are many things I love about the markets. Yes, I love the idea of getting paid for solving the puzzle or playing the game. I love learning. I even…
Market Myths: Data-Driven Insights on the Bearish Engulfing Pattern
Did you catch what happened in the market last week? Stressed out about the future? Worried about your positions or retirement account? Are you hearing people talk about the ominous…
A shift in cryptocurrencies
Cryptocurrencies are in focus recently. Bitcoin has fallen almost 50% from its peak, and the future seems far less certain than it did a year ago. We were able to…
Different markets are… different
What is different and what stays the same? This is one of the key questions traders who trade on different timeframes or in different markets face. We often hear the…
What are the odds? What market stats can and can’t tell us…
I want to share the results of a quick statistical study I did today, and also share a few thoughts about using stats, in general, to shape our trading decisions.…
What we learned about price levels
This is part 2 of a two part blog. Read the first part here. Quick summary: to test the validity of price levels in markets, we created a test in…
When is a human better than a machine? Using human discretion in quantitative testing.
First, thank you to each of you who participated in the experiment/quiz. We have stopped collecting data, but you can re-take the quiz and see which answers were right or…
Roll em! How to calculate futures rolls (and why you care)
This post will be a bit more technical than most, but it’s an important subject to understand. Today, let’s talk about rolling and back-adjusting futures prices: why we did it.…
Reader question: what’s wrong with Fibonacci?
Matt asked a question that I sat on for quite a while. I wasn't sure how to write a reasonably concise answer to a good question, but I'll try today.…
No, it’s not all the same.
In my last post, I showed a quick test of a simple system applied to the futures markets. The point of that post was to show how a simple quantitative…
Testing a trend-following approach in futures
In this post, we'll take a look at a common trend-following trading idea: channel breakouts (also called Donchian channels). I want to share with you a way of looking at…
Getting your hands dirty: tools for understanding the market
Continuing on the theme of my last post, I want to take some time to dig into the options you have when you think about doing your own testing and…
Quantitative analysis: what it is and why you need to do it
I think most traders and investors understand that we live in a world in which markets are becoming ever more competitive. To make money in those markets, you must have…