Systematic trading
How rule-based trading systems are designed, tested, automated and run, from a spreadsheet crossover to fully automated execution.
- Building a simple moving average crossover strategy in Microsoft Excel
A step-by-step spreadsheet tutorial for a simple moving average (SMA) crossover backtest in Excel: data layout, AVERAGE formulas, signal and position columns, avoiding look-ahead bias, returns, costs, equity curve, drawdown and the research evidence on moving-average rules.
- Getting started building a fully automated trading system
The architecture of a fully automated trading system explained: data feeds, signal generation, portfolio and risk logic, order management and broker connectivity, monitoring and kill switches, the difference between semi- and fully automated trading, and the failures that matter most.
- Inside the black box: the parts of a quantitative trading system
How quantitative trading systems divide their work between alpha models, risk models, transaction cost models, portfolio construction and execution, following the framework popularised by Rishi Narang's book Inside the Black Box, with the questions an investor or researcher should ask about each part.
- QuantInsti and the EPAT programme: what an algorithmic trading course covers, and how to evaluate one
An independent explainer on QuantInsti, the India-based algorithmic trading education company, and its EPAT programme, followed by a checklist for evaluating any algorithmic trading course: curriculum, faculty, practical work, costs, claims and alternatives.
- Resistance to high-frequency trading: the debate, the evidence and the market designs it produced
What high-frequency trading is, its main strategies, the arguments of its critics and defenders, the 2010 Flash Crash, Flash Boys and the IEX speed bump, frequent batch auctions, and what research says about HFT's effect on liquidity and costs.
- Why people trade forex, and what the numbers say about retail results
An educational look at the foreign exchange market: its size and structure, who trades and why, how currency pairs, pips and leverage work, the systematic strategies studied in FX research (carry, momentum, value), and the regulatory data on retail losses.
