Raposa
Learn to build automated trading tools that maximize your profits and maximize your free time.
An Easy Way to Diversify Your Trend Following Strategy
Add gold, cocoa, gas, and a plethora of other markets to your system for cheap
July 19, 2022 • Raposa
In 1983 two experienced Chicago traders decided to settle a bet: is trading an innate skill or something that could be taught? To settle this bet, they took out an ad and attracted ordinary peop...
How to Follow the Crowd: A Complete Momentum Trading Strategy
When stocks start moving, jump on board!
July 7, 2022 • Raposa
Ad-hoc decision-making and trading—they go together like acne and prom night. If you've read our post outlining the damage behavioral biases can inflict on a portfolio or our post describ...
How to Test and Trade a Strategy with the PSAR Indicator
Add the PSAR to your trend following model today
June 29, 2022 • Raposa
Markets will always exhibit trends. It's part of human nature. Trends develop as people get excited about a new stock, or as technology or the regulatory environment changes. It's hard...
The Fastest way to Build your Own Trend Following System
Get your trading algo up and running in just a few minutes!
June 21, 2022 • Raposa
Would-be trend followers are frequently stopped by the inability to backtest strategies. Yes, you can use Excel (sort of) but it's exceedingly slow, cumbersome, and will likely require some ...
Build a Bot to Beat the Bear Market
Backtest your strategy during tough times
June 17, 2022 • Raposa
Bear Markets in the News The S&P 500 officially entered bear market territory earlier this week as it is down 20% from its highs in January. Additionally, guys like Michael Burry (the real...
The Critical Mistakes Most Traders Make
Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Algos
June 7, 2022 • Raposa
Join our community of systematic traders on Slack! More Retail Investors than Ever are Trading Over the past few years, we've seen a massive ...
Should you trade this portfolio? Interpreting Backtest Results
Guidelines and important metrics for portfolio backtesting
June 6, 2022 • Raposa
Congrats! You just ran your first backtest and made a bajillion dollars for your (simulated) portfolio! Should you go trade it? Try again for a bajillion-and-one? How do you know you have a good...
Find Your Best Market to Trade With the Hurst Exponent
Detect whether a market is trending, mean reverting, or just random with this indicator
April 11, 2022 • Raposa
After five consecutive years of drought, Northern Californians welcomed the heavy rainfall in the winter of 2016-2017. By February, however, the rain had led many to worry about the integrity of ...
Optimize Your Trading Strategy With Python And The Kelly Criterion
Find the optimal amount of leverage and avoid these simple mistakes!
April 4, 2022 • Raposa
Retail traders almost always have small trading accounts. To get the returns they're after, traders frequently take on leverage - often times imprudent amounts in highly levered FOREX accou...
Do Fundamentals Really Drive Stock Prices?
Research in complex systems may hold the key
March 28, 2022, 8:07 a.m. • Raposa
The market is up as consumer sentiment comes in higher than expected! The market is down over war worries! New low in unemployment boosts market outlook as it closes higher! ...
How to find your own Safe Haven investing strategy
Simulating the S&P 500 and Shopping for Portfolio Protection in Python
March 21, 2022 • Raposa
On Sunday September 2, 1666 a small fire started on the premises of the King's baker in London. By Thursday, the resulting inferno--later dubbed the Great Fire--had reduced much of the medie...
How to gamble with demons (and make money doing it)
A deep dive into safe haven investing and managing your risk
March 7, 2022 • Raposa
A demon comes to you one night giving you a simple dice game to play. You're offered the chance to wager your wealth and receive a 50% increase if you roll a 6, 5% bump if you roll 2-5, or l...
How to think about cost-effective risk reduction to protect your portfolio
The way you look at risk is costing you money
Feb. 28, 2022 • Raposa
Can you increase your returns while reducing your risk? Modern finance says this is a ridiculous concept! There's a trade-off, more return requires more risk by definition. Mark Spitznagel...
3 Ways To Trade The Parabolic SAR In Python
Using the PSAR to build momentum and trend following algos
Feb. 21, 2022 • Raposa
Markets can be volatile, ripping higher over a few weeks before accumulating a series of down days. Timing these momentum trades is never going to be perfect, but indicators like the Parabolic S...
How to use Python and the Kelly Criterion to Optimize your Stock Portfolio
Use Python for advanced, dynamic portfolio optimization
Feb. 14, 2022 • Raposa
Position Sizing is often overlooked by the retail trader. Most wind up over betting and taking on too much risk and blowing up their account. On the other hand, investing in very small amounts ...
Adjusted vs Unadjusted Closing Prices and your Trading Algorithm
How does your choice of closing price impact your backtest?
Feb. 7, 2022 • Raposa
My heart began racing when I logged into my brokerage account - my largest position was down 40% from the day before. I started to freak out. It was a normal day in the market - no big crashe...
The Best Investing Strategies to Protect Yourself from Inflation
Algorithmic trading can serve as a key inflation hedge to preserve your wealth
Jan. 31, 2022 • Raposa
Inflation is on everyone’s mind after the Consumer Price Index (CPI) hit its highest level in 40 years . Price inflation means that the dollars in your pocket are buying fe...
The Complete Guide to Calculating the Parabolic SAR in Python
Step-by-step examples and detailed explanations
Jan. 24, 2022 • Raposa
Markets are never flat. They bounce around higher and lower every day, frequently punctuated by momentum moves where they continue higher and higher or lower and lower for a few days in a row be...
Four Reasons Why Retail Traders Lose Money in the Markets
It's your money, don't do anything stupid with it
Jan. 17, 2022 • Raposa
“Retail traders don’t make money in the markets!” If you have ever been interested in trading, you probably have heard this sentiment before. And, to a large extent, it’s true . There have be...
Better to be Rich than to be Right
Have the freedom to go where the markets take you
Jan. 10, 2022 • Raposa
In 2006, the housing bubble was still on the upswing. Interest rates were at all time lows and banks offered NINJA (no income no job applications) to borrowers to get them into a house, no questi...
Trading Algos Aren't as Scary as You Think
What is Algorithmic Trading?
Jan. 3, 2022 • Raposa
Algorithmic trading. The image likely conjures groups of bespectacled nerds (we are a certain type) staring at screens of code and convoluted charts as their systems make trades at lightning spe...
Your Professors are Still Wrong: The Market isn’t Random
Putting the Random Walk Hypothesis to the Test
Sept. 27, 2021 • Raposa
A mainstay of academic research into the market is the Random Walk Hypothesis (RWH). This is the idea that market moves are random and follow a normal distribution that can be easily described ...
Your Professors are Wrong: You Can Beat the Market
But we're not saying it's easy!
Sept. 21, 2021 • Raposa
“I have noticed that everyone who ever told me that the markets are efficient is poor.” Larry Hite If you’ve had any academic training in economics, you h...
How You Can Trade Better Than The Wall Street Pros
Use your small size to your advantage
Oct. 11, 2021 • Raposa
I had a good idea. It was going to make my company millions of dollars per year. It was different, but certainly doable. “How much do you think it will bring in?” our finance executive asked me....
ATR and How Top Traders Size their Positions
Two methods for using ATR to control your risk
Oct. 18, 2021 • Raposa
The most important aspect of trading is managing your risk. It’s not sexy or exciting, but it’s absolutely critical to staying in the game. Read one of Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards books w...