Skip to content

Quant Concepts

Think Like a Quant

The ideas systematic traders use, explained with worked numbers.

Written for anyone who trades with rules, whether at a first backtest or a full research process. Read the volumes in order, or jump to the topic you need.

Start with Vol 1

The volumes

  1. Vol 1: Expectancy: why win rate alone tells you little

    The number behind every trading rule, and how many trades it takes to trust it.

    9 min read

  2. Vol 2: Backtest overfitting: why the best-looking backtest is often the luckiest

    The backtest illusion: how repeated tuning can fit noise, and which checks can tell a lucky fit from a real pattern on new data.

    10 min read

  3. Vol 3: The reality check: out-of-sample and walk-forward testing

    How testing rules on unseen data helps distinguish repeatable results from a lucky fit, and why one test is not proof.

    In writing

  4. Vol 4: Volatility is the unit of risk

    The Stop-Loss Myth

    Why the same price distance represents different amounts of recent volatility, and how exposure scaling changes estimated risk.

    In writing

  5. Vol 5: Why edges fade, and how regimes show it

    Markets change state; edges get crowded or were never real. How to tell decay from a bad patch.

    In writing

  6. Vol 6: The portfolio mindset: how correlation changes combined risk

    How combining return streams with imperfect correlation can reduce variability under stated assumptions.

    In writing