Helix Trader

Scrolling through my feed, there are two dominant ways I see traders actually using AI right now and neither of them is particularly flattering. Dashboarding There's something incredibly fulfilling about creating a system that's beautifully designed, tracking all the metrics anyone could ever want, P&L overlays, heat maps, sentiment feeds, whatever. It feels like real work. But for many people, it's just procrastination in a more expensive suit. The dashboard becomes the real project, and actual trading gets pushed to the side. Backtesting/Overfitting AI has made backtesting so accessible and so fast that people can torture historical data until it confesses to almost anything. And they do. I've literally watched people backtest a strategy, find that it underperforms on certain days of the week or certain hours, and simply remove those periods from the sample. The irony is that AI was supposed to remove human error from the process, but in practice it's often just amplifying the same old biases with a lot more computational power and a lot more speed behind them. Garbage in, garbage out; except now the garbage is better formatted and executes faster.

This chart, which has been doing the rounds, shows one of the most hedged equity markets in years. That usually means fear is already priced in, and the risk asymmetry increasingly favors upside surprises rather than further panic selling. This chart tracks Estimated S&P 500 Customer Put Delta Positioning from 2019–2026. Extreme hedging has often appeared near market turning points. Right now the chart shows ~-$70B, the most negative level in the entire series. A lot of bad news is already hedged. There is potential for a “hedge unwind rally”

100% of the time 💯 Since 1942, buying $SPX on Midterm-Election Day (MTE) generated a median return of +15.2% through June 30 of the following year (7 months forward). Never, not once, ever was there a negative return in the forward 7-month period. World War II, Vietnam War, 1970s lost decade, Dotcom Bubble, GFC, all macro-time periods included. $SPY $ES_F $QQQ $DIA $GLD $BTC $VOO $VIX $AAPL $NVDA $META $AMZN $TSLA $RUT $IWM

@TheFlowHorse Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

Most important books for a new traders to read? I’ll go first – Fooled By Randomness

Australia’s land wealth now exceeds $10 trillion, yet most Aussies are still paying the bulk of taxes on their labour. Other resource-rich nations reinvest unearned gains for the public, we let them flow largely untaxed to private owners. 📊: ABS ASNA, Table 61 2024-25 1/3

@GoshawkTrades Many aspiring quant traders underestimate how important this step is. @NorgateData FTW!

5) Pay for data. I wasted a whole month using free, aggregated data. In most cases, free data won't suffice. Trading is capital-intensive, and you often need to pay to participate. Paying for quality data is worth it.

I've been algorithmic trading for 5 years. In that time, I went from 0 to 10+ live algo strategies making multi 6 figures. Here are 12 things I wish I knew on day 1:

Backtests are the porn of quant #trading: addictive and usually unrealistic

Traders panic over a bad day because they don’t know what’s normal. One of the best ways to emotionally survive losses is to put them into context. 📊 I track every daily % PnL across the portfolio and plot them as a long-term distribution (live & backtest). It shows what’s normal — even if returns aren’t perfectly normal-distributed. Monday’s –1.08% loss? z-score = –2.28 → roughly a 2.1% percentile event. So I expect about 5–6 such days per year. What this means to me: • My risk sizing is right — I can absorb these • If these events start clustering → something in my edge may be changing Statistics ≠ perfection. But they turn fear into data — and data into control. #SystematicTrading #RiskManagement #TradingPsychology

My latest quarterly market update, giving the technical perspective on the big picture in stocks, currencies, and commodities - including where we stand now and what may lay ahead. youtu.be/_OxTI88COzY

The Wall Street Journal noted that the yield spread between the 2-year Treasury note and 30-year Treasury bond has steepened to the widest point in several years. The last two times this yield curve cycled from inversion to a spread of +1.25%, it coincided with the two most wicked bear markets in generations. Since the inception of the curve, those were the only two signals that preceded negative returns. 🔗Read @jasongoepfert's Sep 2 article "A curve ball from the yield curve" - full report available: payhip.com/b/r5ZTv

Excited to welcome @MicMcCarthy to this year's ATAA Conference in Melbourne, with @moomoo as a valued sponsor. Early bird registration ends Friday, August 22. Don't miss out! Book now: ataa.asn.au/conference-2025 youtu.be/5dVyv0II89c?si…

Only people who have never traded believe in the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

I'll be there. Hope to see you there.

My latest quarterly market update, giving the technical perspective on the big picture in stocks, currencies, and commodities - including where we stand now and what may lay ahead. youtube.com/watch?v=Swp2nE…

Profitable systematic trading isn’t about complexity. It’s about discipline. Here’s a simple mean-reversion system I published 2 years ago. In 2025, it's delivered: ✅ 2.7x return of buy & hold $QQQ ✅ Half the drawdown ✅ Uses only 16% capital 🔍 The rules: - Universe: Nasdaq 100 stocks - Trend filter: Only trade stocks above their 200-day moving average - Signal day: Stock closes down more than 3% vs. prior close - Volatility filter: ATR(5)/Close must be > 3% - Next day: Place a limit buy below the signal-day’s close (fraction of ATR below) - If multiple signals: Buy the stock with the highest ATR(5)/Close - Exit rule: Sell when the stock closes above the previous day’s high or after 10 days. It’s that simple. No forecasting. No overfitting. Just rules + discipline. Try it free in our interactive backtester (with PDF report): 👉 crackingmarkets.com/buying-short-t… #systematictrading #outofsample #completesystem

Always love @GaryStoneSWS's content. Looking forward to tuning in.

Forget the Zweig breadth thrust - the NYSE just triggered a SuperZweig. Both extremes were significantly further than the thresholds of the original signal. The S&P 500 returned more than +20% the year following every prior thrust. Talk about a bear killer.

The $VIX closed above 50 last week for the first time since April 2020. In the past, what has that meant for stocks going forward? Video discussion: youtube.com/watch?v=MgOci7…

The S&P 500 was up 9.5% today, the 3rd biggest 1-day gain since 1950. What has happened in the past following the biggest 1-day gains? Stocks moved substantially higher over the next 1, 3, 5 years every time. bilello.blog/newsletter

Unlock Your Trading Potential with ATAA’s National Speaker Series! Don’t miss this launch event on Saturday 12thApril at Midday AEST (Sydney / Melbourne / Brisbane time) featuring Brent Penfold. ataa.asn.au/content.aspx?p…