Algo Trading Research & Analysis
Data-backed insights on algorithmic trading, market structure, risk management, and systematic execution. Written by practitioners, not observers.
China to Buy 200 Boeing Jets After Trump Meets With Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Trump's Beijing summit announced a 200-aircraft Boeing order, agricultural and energy commitments, and US export licenses for ten Chinese firms to purchase Nvidia's H200 chip.
The PDT Rule Ends June 4. What It Means for Retail Traders.
Q1 2026 Earnings Are Running 27% YoY With an 84% Beat Rate. The Quarter-End Estimate Was 13%.
Two Weeks Into the Iran Ceasefire Extension, Hormuz Is Still a Dual Blockade. Brent Is Pinned Above $100.
CME Just Booked 36.2 Million Contracts a Day. Every Asset Class Set a Record at Once.
Analysis & Research
View AllAlgo Trading vs Manual Trading: What 20 Years of Data Shows
Market StructureWhat Happens While You Sleep: The Overnight Edge in Futures
Trading EducationHow Algorithmic Trading Works: Mechanics, Development, and Evidence
ResearchOverfitting: The Silent Killer of Quantitative Trading Strategies
Latest
China to Buy 200 Boeing Jets After Trump Meets With Xi Jinping in Beijing.
Trump met with Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14, 2026 alongside an eighteen-CEO delegation. The summit announced a 200-aircraft Boeing order, re-affirmed agricultural and energy commitments, and confirmed US export licenses for approximately ten Chinese firms to purchase Nvidia's H200 AI chip. BA traded approximately 4.4% lower midday; pre-summit reporting had cited estimates of up to 500 aircraft.
The PDT Rule Ends June 4. What It Means for Retail Traders.
FINRA's $25,000 Pattern Day Trader minimum is going away after twenty-five years. The real question — what actually changes for retail, and what doesn't.
Q1 2026 Earnings Are Running 27% YoY With an 84% Beat Rate. The Quarter-End Estimate Was 13%.
With 63% of the S&P 500 reported, blended Q1 2026 EPS growth has reached 27.1% — more than double the 13.1% modeled at quarter-end. Companies are beating by 20.7%, the widest surprise margin in five years. Beats are getting paid; misses are punished harder than the historical average.
Two Weeks Into the Iran Ceasefire Extension, Hormuz Is Still a Dual Blockade. Brent Is Pinned Above $100.
The April 8 ceasefire is holding on paper and being violated almost everywhere else. The Strait of Hormuz remains a US-Iran dual blockade — the IEA has called it the largest supply disruption in oil-market history. Brent has range-traded $100 to $126 on every Hormuz headline.
CME Just Booked 36.2 Million Contracts a Day. Every Asset Class Set a Record at Once.
Q1 2026 ADV at CME hit 36.2M contracts — up 22% YoY, six million more a day than any prior quarter, and the first quarter ever in which all six asset classes set quarterly records simultaneously. International ADV up 30%. What it does to systematic execution.
Four FOMC Dissents at Once — First Time Since 1992. The Rate Path Just Bifurcated.
The April 29 vote split 8-4 — most dissents at a single FOMC meeting since October 1992. Treasury yields climbed, December rate-hike odds repriced from 0% to 9.1% intraday, and the SOFR strip ended the day pricing two distinct paths at once.
The VIX Ran From Near 30 to 19 in Eight Sessions. Systematic Strategies Don't Love That.
A textbook binary-event volatility round-trip as Trump extended the Iran ceasefire. Equities at records, oil gave back a 6% spike, fear gauge crushed back under 20. What regime shifts do to systematic futures strategies.
Walk-Forward Analysis: The Right Way to Validate a Trading Strategy
A single in-sample/out-of-sample split produces one estimate of live performance, and one observation is not a distribution. The anchored and rolling variants, the walk-forward efficiency ratio, and what the method still cannot fix.
Oil Dropped 11% After Iran Reopened the Strait of Hormuz. The Regime Just Shifted.
WTI crude lost $10.19 in a single session after Iran said the Strait is "completely open." Equities ripped, gold ran, the dollar sold off. What futures traders should watch next.
What Is Backtesting? And Why Most Backtests Are Broken.
The four failure modes that make most trading backtests unreliable — overfitting, look-ahead bias, transaction-cost omission, insufficient sample — and what good backtesting actually looks like.
Overfitting: The Silent Killer of Quantitative Trading Strategies
Given enough parameter combinations, even a strategy with a true expected return of zero can produce a profitable-looking backtest. The deflated Sharpe ratio and walk-forward analysis explain why.
The Kelly Criterion for Futures Traders: What the Math Actually Says
The Kelly criterion maximizes long-run geometric growth. Full Kelly is almost never optimal in practice. Fractional Kelly — half or quarter — is what most professionals actually use, and the reasoning matters.
Slippage and Transaction Costs: Why Live Results Diverge From Backtest
Commissions and fees are knowable. Slippage and market impact are harder to model, and they're the difference between a profitable backtest and a losing live account.
The Math Behind Not Blowing Up: Position Sizing and Risk in Futures
A 50% drawdown requires a 100% gain to recover. The math behind position sizing, risk of ruin, and why most futures accounts die from bad risk management, not bad entries.
Algo Trading vs Manual Trading: What 20 Years of Data Shows
97% of persistent day traders lose money. Algorithms don't have emotions. Here's what 20 years of academic research reveals about systematic versus discretionary trading.
What Happens While You Sleep: The Overnight Edge in Futures
100% of average S&P 500 annual returns fall in a 4-hour overnight window. A peer-reviewed study explains why and what it means for automated futures traders.
How Algorithmic Trading Works: Mechanics, Development, and Evidence
A research-grade overview of algorithmic trading: the rules-based mechanics, the four-phase development pipeline, and peer-reviewed evidence on systematic versus discretionary performance.
