Better System Trader

Buckle up because we've got a special treat for your trading journey! Adrian Reid, a seasoned trader with a wealth of experience, joins us on Better System Trader, in this special "Trading Triumphs: The Journey to Success" series, to get real about what it truly takes to succeed in the market.  In this discussion, we dig deep into 3 defining moments of Adrian's trading journey, to uncover what really helped him achieve success. We're unpacking the trials, triumphs, and timeless wisdom of trading. This isn't just an episode; it's a masterclass in perseverance and profit. Here are 5 keys you'll unlock in this episode (plus many more!):  The Marathon Mindset: Learn why trading is a long-haul game and how keeping a level head through the wins can define your success. Diversification is Your Safety Net: Discover Adrian's strategy for using gains to spread your risk and open new doors in the trading world.  The Power of Patience: Adrian spills the beans on how waiting out a staggering 27 losing trades in a row taught him the patience of a saint—and the payoff was heavenly!  Emotional Equilibrium: Get the inside scoop on handling the mental game of uncomfortable drawdowns without losing your cool (or your shirt).  System Adoration: Why falling in love with the process, the rules, and the rigorous testing of your trading system can be the most rewarding relationship you'll ever have. 

How can traders make better decisions to improve their trading results?   In this episode, Matt Zimberg from Optimus Futures joins me to discuss decision making, what traders do wrong and how to be a more successful trader (and person) by making better trading decisions.   Here are some of the topics we discuss: The importance of decision-making in trading, Common mistakes traders make, How traders underestimate “the game of trading”, Filtering out bad trading information and training your brain to make good decisions, The importance of learning about things outside the market, The 3 main goals of successful traders, Fear and euphoria, Contrarian trading, people who shouldn't trade, and much more.

Are you looking for unique ways to use “Big Picture” analysis to guide your trading decisions? In this episode, Brent Penfold from indextrader.com.au joins me to share some interesting (and effective) techniques he uses to determine the big picture to guide trading and investing decisions, including:   Why the big picture is so important in trading, How technical analysis can fool traders, What are fractals and why they matter, Validating market reactions to specific levels, The Market Ladder that projects support and resistance levels, Using fractals to see the big picture and the simplest fractal pattern there is, Pivot points over multiple timeframes and market expectations around pivots, Examples of market reactions to pivot points, Is it safe to get back into the market? Fractals and pivot points on non-index markets, Dynamic pivot points vs static pivot points, Robustness in old trading ideas, And much more!

Which is better for trading strategies - Indicators or Price Action? In this episode, Scott Welsh from scottwelshstrategies.com joins me to answer this eternal question. Here are some of the topics we discuss: Strange things that have impacted the markets this year, The value of reviewing simple strategies, Expectations traders have of trading strategies, Choosing the right trading style for a market, How to determine which markets trend the most, Old trading strategies that continue to do very well, How to manufacture “lucky” trading, Tracking dozens of old strategies, Identify strategy failure, The recent performance simple trading strategies, Plus much more!    

3 amazing guests join us to discuss trading insights of the past year and how to prepare for a HUGE trading year ahead, including: Getting better as a strategy builder, Challenges building short index strategies, Switching between old and new strategies, Timeframes for short-term trading strategies, Scaling out in volatile sideways markets, When the next bear market will begin and the transition from Bull to Bear, Trend following over the last few months, "V" price movements in the markets, Stop & Reverse and small stops in crazy markets, Plus doing more of what works, old strategies that do well, algorithmic short selling and much more.

Adrian Reid from Enlightened Stock Trading joins us to discuss systematic crypto trading, including: Why traders should consider the crypto markets right now, The mistakes most traders make with crypto, Choosing the best exchanges, data and software for crypto trading, Why buy and old is a bad approach to crypto and what you should do instead, The types of strategies that work in the crypto markets right now, The 3 types of risk in the crypto space (and how to reduce them), How to overcome limitations in crypto data, plus Regime filters, optimization, stop losses, backtesting, robustness, auto trading, price behaviour and much more.

David Stendahl from SignalTradingGroup joins us to discuss techniques traders can use to achieve more stable results, including: Why it's good to understand a systems logic and will simple systems continue to work, How to apply adaptive logic to simple systems, Mistakes traders make using seasonals, How "seasonal depth" can identify when a market is likely to make a big move, Using environmental overlays to adjust position sizing, Using VIX to switch strategies on/off, Plus, we discuss which is better: diversification of systems or markets?

Lawrence Chan from DayTradingBias joins us to discuss market bias and how to leverage structural bias to increase strategy performance, including: "Atomic strategies" and knowing when to NOT trade, The most toxic period to backtest a strategy, Why market behaviours are becoming so predictable, How some trading platforms are taking traders down the wrong path, Exploring biases caused by recurring events, Why traders should think in concepts first, Plus, leverage and volatility breakouts, chart patterns, simple tools, knowing the behaviours of market participants, human psyche, market internals and much more.

Jason Shapiro from Crowded Market Report discusses a contrarian approach to trading profits, including: Why contrarian trading makes sense, How to identify crowded trades and why price is not a good contrarian signal, What the markets really are and why traders don't understand it, Risk management for contrarian trades, Why traders shouldn't care about being right or wrong, Plus, COT report, hedgers and speculators, fading the “experts”, trading through news events and much more.

Larry Tentarelli from Blue Chip Daily joins us to discuss techniques to buying pullbacks and avoiding bear markets, including: Determining the trend with price action and why price action is better than indicators, Using volatility and range expansion as warning signs, Impact of the index on individual stocks, Managing trades when markets are breaking down, Reliability of moving average crosses, Clues that indicate a pullback may be turning into a bear market, Using market internals to identify potential turning points, Plus, systematic rules vs discretionary trading, trading in a bear market, controlling the urge to overtrade, scaling-out of positions, sector rotation and selection, what to watch for in the markets right now, and much more.  

Kris Longmore from RobotWealth joins us to discuss 4 key areas part-time traders need to take seriously to be successful, including: Why it's important to understanding market participants and why they're trading, 3 common things traders do that almost guarantee they will blow up, Setting realistic expectations for retail traders, The "edge pyramid" and where retail traders should target, The “backtest cycle of doom”, why backtesting is not research, and a better approach to finding a trading edge, plus Risk premia harvesting, turn of the month edges, universe selection, VIX trading edges, FX seasonality, portfolio Zen, risk allocation, crypto trading, machine learning and much more!

Martyn Tinsley from TradeLikeAMachine joins us to discuss market noise, and how to leverage noise to improve trading strategies, including: Why it's important to understand market noise, The impact of market noise on trading strategies, Using noise to filter assets and timeframes, Example of impact of market noise on Mean Reversion strategies, The best strategies to trade in noisy markets, The difference between noise and volatility, Harmonic price patterns, instantaneous noise filtering, trading currency pairs, signal lag in noise indicators, repeatable patterns vs indicators and much more!

Brian Blandin from Markets Science joins us to discuss how to find and trade statistical edges in the crypto markets, including: The things traders need to be aware of before trading crypto, Common factors and repeatable patterns that move the crypto markets, Software, programming language and exchange selection, How to screen cryptocurrencies to find those worth trading, Safety of funds at unregulated brokers, Crypto market correlation to stocks and index futures, Moving from discretionary to systematic crypto trading, volatility, slippage, liquidity and much more!  

Curtis White from Beyond Backtesting joins us to discuss 3 ways traders can build better trading models, including: The problem with trading models and why traders struggle to incorporate predictive factors into models, What drives the markets and using market cognition for better trading ideas, Identifying and trading different markets and datasets, Using statistical creativity in the strategy validation process, Problems with Walk Forward Optimization and the 'proven winner' solution, Testing with different bar types, the negative impacts of being too risk averse, and much more!

Kyle Schultz from Algorithmic Futures joins us to discuss how to leverage volatility in your trading strategies to improve risk/reward and outperform the market, including: Why volatility is a key component in trading strategies, 3 main ways to apply volatility in trading strategies, Types of volatility filters and when to use them in the strategy development process, Using VIX term structure as a regime filter, Adapting strategies to different volatility regimes, Mean reversion vs momentum in different volatility regimes, And much more!

Jeff Swanson from EasyLanguageMastery discusses how to avoid curve fitting your trading strategies using the "independent testing" technique, including: The things traders do that cause curvefitting, Is curvefitting a trading strategy really that bad? Independent testing and why you should use it when developing trading strategies, How to do independent testing of filters and using optimization to judge filter consistency, Testing combinations of filters and why you should look to remove Plus, types of filters to test, where to get trading ideas, how long to test a trading idea, when to switch strategies off, combining filters, tweaking a strategy and much more!

Algorithmic trader Cesar Alvarez from Alvarez Quant Trading joins us to discuss low effort trading strategies, including: An explanation of rotational trading and the benefits/challenges of using rotational strategies, Why rotational trading is a fantastic way to diversify time (and also get to “trade lazy”), How often to rebalance and the impacts of the day you choose to rebalance, Ranking methods and some of the most effective ways to find the best candidates, How to reduce the churn in rotational trading with one small but powerful exit tweak, Plus, universe selection, risk management, rebalancing, short trades, mean reversion, stock splits, audience questions and much more!

Trend following trader David Lundgren joins us to discuss how to improve trend following performance, including: The problem with momentum (and why momentum “doesn't work”), Why momentum isn't working today, Mixing momentum with trend following for better performance, The 4 conditions that must happen for a trend to occur, Modeling regime drivers and digging deeper to understand true market health, What to do when trading strategies are struggling, And much more.

Trader, author and performance coach Dr Brett Steenbarger discusses how traders can get an edge by applying innovation to their trading, including: The 2 levels of improvements traders can make, Why traders resist innovation and how to address hesitation to change, How to innovate by looking at what we do well, Why NOT trading can be an innovation for traders, Impacts of lifestyle and mindset on innovation, Why you should “limit your search” when looking for edges, The 2 qualities most shared amongst successful traders Plus, odds and backtesting market patterns, skill vs luck, testing in relevant market regimes, what successful traders focus on and much more!

Quant trader Ernie Chan from PredictNow.ai joins us to discuss how to predict the profitability of trades using machine learning, including: Unconditional probability and the problem with win% in backtest reports, Why “conditional probability” is much more useful for a trader and how to apply conditional probabilities to capital allocation, Why you should use Machine Learning for risk management and capital allocation only (and not for building trading strategies), Why feature selection and feature importance ranking are so valuable, Plus, the best ML techniques for prediction, how simple should trading strategies be, insights from cluster-based feature selection, do these techniques really work, ML as a crystal ball and much more!

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!

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!

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.  

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

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!

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!

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!

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!

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 

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  

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

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.

Details about what's next for BST and the special event being hosted this weekend.

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.

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.

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.