Jake Maning

Preface

A great trader knows how and why their strategies work. 

Let's face it, the markets are rigged and trading favours the market makers and institutional players. So for us retail trade-hunters, it's a game of capturing alpha where we can by scanning for opportunities, testing our systems, laying traps and executing. 

There is no "I hope" or "I wish", we are technical traders, we traders are risk-management experts and we're in the business of getting the math right. 

We live and die by our PnL. 

Quantitive Trading

Quantitive or systematic speculation in the financial markets is an automated "rules based" approach to risking money in order to by and sell at a profit. This can be done by exploiting market inefficiencies where  one trading system wins and another one loses. Winning strategies remain viable and profitable through superior risk and trade system performance management- Consistent and constant profits.

Quantitative processes or "Algo" trading, is an automated and purely technical style of trading, which utilizes execution scripts or 'automated strategies' that generate buy and sell orders.

Note: We monitor markets, PnL and our algos to flag any divergences or performance deterioration. 

Risk Management

How much are we willing to risk to make a buck? I believe trade plans must include profit targets and stop losses limits in each individual setup, in order to achieve consistent and constant results without blowing up. Each trade carries risk and depends on the asset, instrument, market, timing, position sizing, rate of return, drawdown threshold and past performance.

Journaling

I maintain a trade journal that logs transactions; cumulative profits over time, individual strategy performance, trade execution times 24/7, changing risk to reward ratios, correlations and what effects changing markets have on our strategies - Defund the losers and add size to the winners.

Backtesting and forward testing

Historical trade data is reviewed regularly to observe changes in strategy performance, market behaviour/regime shifts and new opportunities. Forward testing with out-of-sample trade data enables us to further reduce bias in how each strategy might perform under adverse circumstances. 

Asset Classes

Crypto Swaps, commodity CFDs and Stock CFDs.