The trading book
The Algo Trader
Decide once. Then stop deciding. The discipline lives in the rule, not in the moment. Write it down, size it, and stop renegotiating it every time the screen moves.
Where it sits
A shorter clock, run alongside the long-term portfolio and never instead of it.
Who does this for a living
A quant fund or a CTA
Known for it
Simons, Asness, Harding
The loop
Read, thesis, decision, review.
Read
The data and the signal, not the tape and the mood.
Thesis
The rule is the thesis: written down, testable, and settled before you need it.
Decision
Made once, in advance. Size, entry and exit set while you are calm.
Review
Does the rule still work on data it has never seen? Retire it on evidence, not on a bad month.
The problem
The rule works. You are the part that overrides it.
A rule you can state beats a view you can argue, which is the whole appeal of doing it this way. What breaks it is never the logic. It is the month where the logic is losing and nothing written down says whether this is the drawdown you already accepted or the evidence that it stopped working. Without that line, every system eventually becomes discretionary.
Planned. Not started.
It is in the plan and it is not being written yet. The ones already on the desk go first. What comes after them is decided with the founding cohort, so joining now is how you move this one up the order.
Get serious
Discipline beats impulse. Process beats luck.
Welcome, Finaketeers.