I look back at one of my own ledgers and the pattern is always the same. Eight months of small losses and tiny scratches, the equity curve flat enough to…
A trader buys near-the-money call options two days before an earnings report. The stock prints, moves 1.4% in the right direction, and the calls still close down 22%. The chart…
A swing trader risks 2% of a $50,000 account on every trade. The rule has held since the first month of the journal. Then the VIX prints 38 on a…
How Cover's universal portfolio algorithm sizes positions without assuming a known edge, adapting allocation as market evidence accumulates over time.
Paul Tudor Jones is most often introduced through one trade, his short positioning around the October 19, 1987 crash, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell about twenty two percent…
Hard drawdown stops feel disciplined but force near-cash exposure after losses, destroying Sharpe ratios. Here is what the research says and what works better.
Use the Kelly criterion to size swing trades with win rate, payoff ratio, fractional Kelly, drawdown caps, portfolio budgets, and uncertain edge estimates.
Most traders spend a disproportionate amount of time on entry signals and almost no time on the mathematical structure of how much to risk on each trade. Ralph Vince spent…
Scale swing-trade position size to VIX regime. A Kelly-VIX hybrid framework that cuts drawdowns by adapting bet size to low, normal, and high volatility states.
SPY closed at $558.12 on April 2, 2025. The next day it dropped to $530.62. The day after that, $499.55. Then on April 9 it ripped back to $542.40 in…