Better System Trader

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!   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.

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!   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.

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!   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.

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    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.

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   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.

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   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.  

Cesar Alvarez, an expert in quant-based trading strategies, shares effective Market Regime techniques to improve strategy performance and reduce risk. They discuss the impact of market regimes on trading strategies, using market filters and timing indicators, strategy failure in changing market conditions, preferred testing methods, and biases in the stock market based on the day of the week.

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

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.   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.

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.   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.