{"id":251311,"date":"2026-07-28T10:53:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T14:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ibkrcampus.com\/campus\/?p=251311"},"modified":"2026-07-28T13:28:44","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T17:28:44","slug":"the-making-of-a-trader","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.interactivebrokers.com\/campus\/podcasts\/ibkr-podcasts\/the-making-of-a-trader\/","title":{"rendered":"The Making of a Trader"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What does it really take to become a successful trader? IBKR interns put veteran systematic trader Adrian Reid to the test with questions about AI, risk management, backtesting, and building a lasting edge, revealing the lessons every aspiring trader should learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-featured-ibkr-summer-interns\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Featured IBKR Summer Interns<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Chris McLoughlin<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> Purdue University<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Computer Science<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Enterprise Architecture Intern<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Devika Menon<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> Georgia Institute of Technology<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Finance &amp; Fin-tech<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Data Analyst Intern<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Drew Tunstall<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> University of Virginia<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Economics\/Media Studies<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Trading Education Intern<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Jai Patel<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> Rutgers University &#8211; New Brunswick<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Computer Science<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Software Development Intern, UI Brokerage Apps<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Konark Kumar Gupta<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> University of Chicago<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Financial Mathematics (Master&#8217;s)<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Electronic Trading Compliance Intern<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Thu Le<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> Harvard University<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Economics &amp; Linguistics<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Marketing Project Management Intern<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Will Tang<\/strong><br><strong>School:<\/strong> Indiana University<br><strong>Major:<\/strong> Finance<br><strong>Internship:<\/strong> Alternatives &amp; Derivative Client Services Intern<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<iframe title=\"The Making of a Trader\" allowtransparency=\"true\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" style=\"border: none; min-width: min(100%, 430px);height:150px;\" scrolling=\"no\" data-name=\"pb-iframe-player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.podbean.com\/player-v2\/?i=3fibq-1b20a7d-pb&#038;from=pb6admin&#038;share=1&#038;download=1&#038;rtl=0&#038;fonts=Arial&#038;skin=1b1b1b&#038;font-color=ffffff&#038;logo_link=episode_page&#038;btn-skin=c73a3a\" loading=\"lazy\"><\/iframe>\n\n\n\n<h2 id=\"h-summary-ibkr-podcasts-ep-409\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Summary \u2013 IBKR Podcasts Ep. 409<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>The following is a summary of a live audio recording and may contain errors in spelling or grammar. Although IBKR has edited for clarity no material changes have been made<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-chris-mcloughlin\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chris McLoughlin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hello, and welcome to IBKR Podcasts. My name is Chris McLaughlin. I am a computer science student at Purdue University, and&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;currently interning here at IBKR for the Enterprise Architecture Department.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;super excited to be hosting today&#8217;s special podcast episode featuring IBKR summer interns.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Today,&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;very excited&nbsp;to welcome Adrian Reid to the podcast. As&nbsp;background, Adrian is the founder of Enlightened Stock Trading. He is a trader, educator, and author who specializes in systematic trading and evidence-based investing. He has spent years developing and teaching systematic approaches to trading with a focus on building repeatable trading systems, portfolio construction, risk management, and removing emotional decision-making from the investment process. Through his educational programs, books, and coaching, Adrian has helped thousands of investors and traders improve their approach by relying on data, process, and disciplined execution rather than prediction or intuition. Today,&nbsp;we&#8217;ll&nbsp;be discussing Adrian&#8217;s journey into systematic trading, how traders can build and test robust systems, the psychology behind successful execution, and how emerging technologies like AI are shaping the future of trading. Adrian, welcome to the podcast. How are you?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m&nbsp;great. Thanks so much for having me.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;looking forward to the panel interview.&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;not done one of these for a long time and this is&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be fun, so&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-chris-mcloughlin-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chris McLoughlin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course.\u00a0Yeah,\u00a0we&#8217;re\u00a0super excited to have you. So just to kick things off, I&#8217;m\u00a0gonna\u00a0go\u00a0ahead and hand it off to Jay to ask the first question.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-jai-patel\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jai Patel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi, Adrian. As Chris said, we really appreciate and have been really looking forward to having you on the podcast. Just a little bit about me.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a Rutgers student,&nbsp;rising&nbsp;senior studying computer science.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a software&nbsp;dev intern&nbsp;at IB. And what I wanted to ask was, Adrian,&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;been a mentor and educator&nbsp;to thousands upon&nbsp;thousands of traders. I wanted to ask on your sort of come&nbsp;up,&nbsp;did you have any sort of figure like that?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a good question.&nbsp;I think mentoring is really important.&nbsp;It makes such a difference, pardon&nbsp;me,&nbsp;it makes such a difference to how fast you can master something. And you can&nbsp;probably see&nbsp;here, you know,&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;a lot of trading books that I&#8217;ve&nbsp;kind of used&nbsp;and&nbsp;benefited&nbsp;from over the years.&nbsp;When I&nbsp;was starting&nbsp;out, mentoring was not&nbsp;really that&nbsp;available.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it was really a case of&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;from a distance&nbsp;observing&nbsp;people who I respected and could learn from, and trying to, you know, get as close as I could to them without necessarily being in their physical presence. Particularly being in Australia, a lot of the major&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;trading figures at the time, and this is, you know, more than twenty-five years ago now, a lot of the major trading figures were in the US, and so I was a long way from them.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But&nbsp;probably one&nbsp;that stands out that I really was influenced by a lot early in my journey is Dr. Van Tharp. Unfortunately, Van&#8217;s no longer with us, but I benefit a lot from his books and we had a couple of courses that I did online and live over the years that really shaped a lot about my trading journey, especially in the areas of risk management, actually long-term survival.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;credit Van, I guess, with my survival in the markets, at least in the early stages, and that&#8217;s, you know, I think that&#8217;s really important,&nbsp;&#8217;cause&nbsp;one of the most important things in trading is you&#8217;ve&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;survive.&nbsp;You know, if you blow up your account, you&#8217;re done, and you have to start again, and that just wastes years and years of compounding time.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;I think, you know, in terms of mentoring in the trading space, at least, that would be one.&nbsp;There&#8217;s&nbsp;several other authors who are major influences in my life, my trading life, but Van would be the biggest one because I think&nbsp;he&#8217;s&nbsp;who&nbsp;was responsible for&nbsp;my survival long term.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-jai-patel-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jai Patel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you, Adrian. And I had a follow-up. How would you sort of illustrate the sort of impact&#8211; I know you&nbsp;didn&#8217;t&nbsp;necessarily have a direct mentor, but, you know, how would you accredit those sorts of figures, those sorts of resources to your success?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was starting, no&#8230; I&nbsp;didn&#8217;t&nbsp;know any traders, so&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;the first point.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I had to learn from someone, and I&nbsp;didn&#8217;t&nbsp;even know any aspiring traders at the beginning, and so I just started reading. And I went through this divergence convergence kind of process for my learning, and the divergence started with just getting whatever books were available locally on trading and investing and trying to kind of learn broadly to figure out what it was all about and what I really needed to learn.&nbsp;And eventually, I discovered systematic trading, and I discovered systematic trading through the Market Wizards series from Jack Schwager, and that was a pivotal point because as soon as I discovered systematic trading, I realized that was my thing. That was&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be my thing because I was an&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m&nbsp;an analytical person. I studied engineering.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;quite quantitative.&nbsp;I like numbers and analysis and math and quantitative trading really just leapt off the page at me.&nbsp;And&nbsp;so&nbsp;after that, I basically spent time on Amazon finding every book I could on trading, technical trading,&nbsp;quantif- quantified trading, technical analysis, all of those things, and basically was ordering boxes and boxes of books to help me on my journey.&nbsp;Again, a lot of this stuff wasn&#8217;t available in Australia at the time, so I was having, you know, crates of books delivered from Amazon, reading them, throwing a whole bunch of them away&nbsp;&#8217;cause&nbsp;they were garbage, and really just going through the ones that had value and, you know, dog-earing the pages, writing notes in the margins and so on.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;I think that divergent process to identify my niche in the trading world and then converging on that and finding the authors and the teachers in that&nbsp;space, and&nbsp;going deep on learning with their content is what&#8217;s really responsible for helping me get there or get through the initial stages to some level of consistency and some level of profitability.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does that kind of answer the question?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-jai-patel-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jai Patel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh, for sure. And I just think like, you know, coming from a starting point where you&nbsp;didn&#8217;t&nbsp;really have a lot of people, a lot of resources, and&nbsp;to accomplish&nbsp;what&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;accomplished is so impressive. I had one more follow-up to that.&nbsp;So&nbsp;you mentioned, you know,&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;really interested in&nbsp;numbers,&nbsp;quantitative data. Did you always sort of have that interest, or was there like a moment or a stretch of time where you realized, like, this is something that I&#8217;m really passionate and interested&nbsp;about?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Look, the analytical side of life is&nbsp;probably always&nbsp;where&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;been most comfortable. I mean, in school,&nbsp;wouldn&#8217;t&nbsp;say I hated, but&nbsp;pretty much I&nbsp;hated English and I hated any of the social subjects. I was no good at languages. I was no good at music and art, like any of the creative stuff. It just&nbsp;wasn&#8217;t&nbsp;my jam.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in math class, in chemistry, in physics, I felt comfortable and at home.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it&#8217;s&#8211; I think&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;some&#8211; an area of life that has just always been more natural. I&nbsp;won&#8217;t&nbsp;say it comes completely naturally. I mean, obviously I had to learn and whatever, but&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;the sorts of subjects and topics that I like.&nbsp;So going from school to university, the choice of something analytical was again, obvious. Engineering was the choice at the time for people who were&nbsp;kind of good&nbsp;at math and liked physical things and was fascinated by how the world worked. And then engineering led to problem-solving, and problem-solving led to&nbsp;kind&nbsp;of&nbsp;the markets&nbsp;in some way.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And trading is really a problem-solving kind of journey, figuring out what works, what&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;work, why, and putting rules around it, and creating trading programs that work.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;know. In hindsight, it looks&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;natural, but&nbsp;yeah,&nbsp;I guess I&nbsp;like the analytical side of life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-jai-patel-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Jai Patel<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, I can totally relate.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;much more of a math guy too.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;pass it back to Chris.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-chris-mcloughlin-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chris McLoughlin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks, Jay.&nbsp;I kind of actually have a question that builds off of that a little bit.&nbsp;You mentioned really appreciating the analytical side of things, and I am sure&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;a lot of other people out there,&nbsp;maybe even&nbsp;some people listening that are&nbsp;kind of in&nbsp;that same boat.&nbsp;But systematic trading can seem like a really intimidating world to break into.&nbsp;From your experience, what would you say are some&nbsp;of like&nbsp;the non-negotiable skills and foundations needed before a new trader can create their first system?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Adrian Reid<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a good question. It&#8211; and it does look intimidating from the outside, and&nbsp;I think it&nbsp;looks intimidating because a lot of people overcomplicate it. And, you know, when you think about&nbsp;quanti-quantitative trading, often you kind of get these images of hedge funds with PhDs in math and complicated coding and analysis that you look at on the page, and you actually don&#8217;t understand what it means.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I&nbsp;wanna&nbsp;be upfront and say&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;only one aspect of systematic or algorithmic trading. Like, it&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;have to be that complicated. I&nbsp;won&#8217;t&#8211;&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;not a math genius.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;not a programming genius. You know, and you&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;need to be.&nbsp;So&nbsp;what are the non-negotiated&#8211; non-negotiable&nbsp;skills?&nbsp;I think the first one&nbsp;is&nbsp;fascination&nbsp;with the markets, and&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;because&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not easy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s&nbsp;not easy conceptually. Like,&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;some concepts&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to grasp and some skills&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to develop, and you&nbsp;have to&nbsp;learn to do some things which are not taught in schools. You know,&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;not natural. And it&#8217;s also not easy emotionally because you&#8217;re&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be challenged when your account is going up and down, when you have a sudden loss that you don&#8217;t expect, when you&#8217;re sitting&nbsp;there&nbsp;f- in fear worrying about pressing the button to enter or exit a trade if you&#8217;re doing the right thing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Your emotions are going wild. And to cope with those things, you need a reason, and just making money is not really a good enough reason.&nbsp;You&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to love the game, and I think most people who really win in whatever discipline in life love the game&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;playing. And I think you&#8217;ve just&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;love the markets.&nbsp;You&#8217;ve&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;be interested in, like, why did that happen and what is going on and&nbsp;who&#8217;s&nbsp;driving that and how does that work? And if you have that fascination, then it helps give you the fuel to get through some of those challenges, both&nbsp;the emotional&nbsp;and&nbsp;the technical.&nbsp;So&nbsp;fascination with the markets is one.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The second one, also a non-technical skill, is curiosity. And&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;because most things about the markets are not intuitive. You know, we come in, we study whatever we study, and we have these ideas about how the world works. And when&#8211; and that comes from our training in school, it comes from our family&nbsp;interactions,&nbsp;it comes from our training at university or whatever.&nbsp;And then we come to the markets, and all of a sudden there&#8217;s this emotional, irrational beast called the markets, and it does things that you don&#8217;t expect.&nbsp;And it reacts to good news badly, and it reacts to&nbsp;bad news&nbsp;well, and it causes things that&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;happen elsewhere in life. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;we&#8217;ve got to get curious about that and dig into why and dig into what is actually happening.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because if we bring all of our preconceptions from life into the markets, we&#8217;re&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be dead wrong, and we&#8217;re&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;lose money hand over&nbsp;fist.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to be open to the fact that we might be wrong.&nbsp;We&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to be open to the fact that the way we think money and&nbsp;wor- the world and, you know,&nbsp;economics&nbsp;works might be wrong.&nbsp;And an announcement that looks at face value to be hugely positive might push the share price down because&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not as positive as what people were expecting or because people were expecting something different or because people&nbsp;didn&#8217;t&nbsp;like what they heard. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not always rational, and&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not always intuitively obvious.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In fact,&nbsp;frequently,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not intuitively obvious.&nbsp;So&nbsp;if we&#8217;re&#8211; if we can get curious and be open to learning about how the markets actually move rather than how we think they should be moving, then we can really start to make some inroads.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the two things are&nbsp;fascination&nbsp;with the markets and curiosity, completely not technical things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then we get to the technical&nbsp;stuff. I mean, they&#8211; you only really need basic math, and you only really need basic programming, particularly now in the world of AI. I mean, I can dream up an idea by looking at some charts, throw it to my AI kind of environment and have it fully define the idea, fully code the idea, run it through my fifteen-step process to test and evaluate and fine-tune and improve it, and then it spits out a written report to me in plain English.&nbsp;You know, I don&#8217;t even need the kind of real technical stuff anymore, as long as I understand what&#8217;s going on under the hood.&nbsp;So those technical barriers, I&nbsp;think&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;reducing a lot, and it comes down to some of the things that I talked about earlier. Plus,&nbsp;probably a&nbsp;little bit of creativity.&nbsp;You need&nbsp;the math,&nbsp;yeah, you need the programming, but increasingly,&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;not really barriers anymore.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;more about those other things that keep you in the game.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-chris-mcloughlin-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chris McLoughlin<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, I think that&#8217;s really interesting.&nbsp;I think the emotional side of trading&nbsp;is something that not a lot of people consider when&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;looking at it from the outside. But I know I&#8217;m personally starting my trading journey here pretty early, and it&#8217;s something that I&#8217;m learning to deal with pretty quickly, is kind of coping with things not going as you expect them to, and maybe the markets start&#8211; just aren&#8217;t as easy as like numbers on a page.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think that information and&nbsp;that advice&nbsp;is&nbsp;very valuable. Moving forward,&nbsp;I&#8217;ll&nbsp;go ahead and hand the next&nbsp;question on&nbsp;to Thu.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-thu-le\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thu Le<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks, Chris.&nbsp;Just want to say it&#8217;s been really great to hear about your experiences and insights.&nbsp;Adrian, my name is Tu.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a rising senior at Harvard studying econ and linguistics, and&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;an intern on the marketing project management team this summer. I just kind of want to expand upon your point of curiosity and the emotional aspect of trading and talk a little bit about your evidence-based investing approach as well as kind of what that means in practice, specifically of like how a trader gather, tests, and actually trusts evidence before committing real money, especially in times of like high market or economic volatility.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah. Okay. Good one. Good question.&nbsp;So&nbsp;evidence-based trading is&#8211;&nbsp;Basically what&nbsp;I like to do is never place a trade that I&nbsp;haven&#8217;t&nbsp;tested and&nbsp;validated&nbsp;with some sort of data. And of course, you&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;know in the moment how that trade&#8217;s&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;pan out, but the conditions in which&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;placing a trade have&nbsp;probably happened&nbsp;many, many times over the last several decades.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And&nbsp;so&nbsp;what I&nbsp;wanna&nbsp;do is look for data that I can use to model a strategy. And in its simplest form, and frankly, in the markets, often just keeping it simple is the best thing to do.&nbsp;So&nbsp;in its simplest form, that looks like getting the historical open high, low close volume prices for any instrument that&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;trading, and&nbsp;then applying your trading rules to those.&nbsp;So&nbsp;think pure technical analysis, you know, a price breaks above a two hundred day&nbsp;high,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;probably going&nbsp;up. This is all&nbsp;hypothesis&nbsp;by the way.&nbsp;So&nbsp;you imagine you look at a&nbsp;chart&nbsp;and you say, &#8220;Okay, the chart&#8217;s going up. If I&nbsp;bought&nbsp;here, and if I&nbsp;sold&nbsp;when that happened, that should make money because look at this one great example on the chart.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">One&nbsp;great example&nbsp;means nothing because the markets are so noisy. But if you look at that and say, &#8220;All right, well, I got a hypothesis that if I did that over and over again on many stocks over many years, I would make money,&#8221; then you take those rules, you apply them to that data, and you test it historically, and you see how it would&#8217;ve performed.&nbsp;And so, you know, this is the process of back testing, and that&#8217;s, I think one of the most important skills for a&nbsp;quantified&#8211; quant- quantitative trader is to really be able to take your hypotheses and test them on data that exists in the markets. And that data might be price data, interest rate data, it could be economic&nbsp;data,&nbsp;it could even be social cues or social kind of chatter about, you know, how&nbsp;frequently&nbsp;a stock is mentioned or something like that.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the easiest data and the best data to start with is pure price data because price allows you to develop strategies that work. Not all price-driven strategies work, but pure price strategies can work. And so that&#8217;s simple data.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;easy to get.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;easy to model because&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;not too many variables that are uncontrollable.&nbsp;You know, if&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;just creating a strategy on the price history of a stock, you get that price history every single day. It comes in at a certain time.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;available when you need to make&nbsp;the&nbsp;decision. So&nbsp;basically&nbsp;you take that data, you overlay your rules on it, you see how it performed, and then you&nbsp;te-&nbsp;validate&nbsp;or invalidate your hypothesis.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s&nbsp;of course&nbsp;a whole process&nbsp;around this.&nbsp;So&nbsp;when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;back testing a system, you know,&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;creating the hypothesis rules.&nbsp;We&#8217;re running some tests to validate that there is actually an edge there.&nbsp;Then we refine those rules. We&nbsp;probably optimize, vary the parameters to make sure that&nbsp;we&#8217;ve&nbsp;got some sort of stability in the rules.&nbsp;You know, if the two hundred-day moving average adds value, and the hundred and fifty-day moving average adds value, and the three hundred-day moving average adds value, then the moving average&nbsp;probably adds&nbsp;value. But if the two hundred-day moving average adds value and the hundred and ninety-day moving average&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t, and the two hundred and ten-day moving average&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t, then&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;probably just&nbsp;a fluke in the data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;a big part of our job is figuring out what is real and&nbsp;actually adds&nbsp;value and what is just a fluke in the data so that we&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;fall victim to data mining and overfitting.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we need a process to go through that, but essentially, we&#8217;re taking a hypothesis, back testing it on real data that would have been available at the time we were making the trade, and seeing if we can design a system that worked in the past, then validating it on unseen data, and then going live and testing it with real money, and then scaling it up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Does that explain&nbsp;sort of clearly&nbsp;enough what&nbsp;you&#8217;re&#8211;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-thu-le-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thu Le<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, for sure. And I think it&#8217;s interesting&nbsp;&#8217;cause&nbsp;given how uncertainty or un- yeah, c- it can seem, trading can seem&nbsp;as&nbsp;a young investor, it&#8217;s reassuring to hear that there are some concrete methods and good practices to follow in order to take some of that risk and uncertainty away.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;the&nbsp;uncertainty is&nbsp;actually really&nbsp;important here because one of the things that holds people back is the belief that there should be an answer and one right way to do it.&nbsp;So&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;the best rule?&nbsp;What&#8217;s&nbsp;the best moving average? What&#8211; You know, how wide should my stop loss be? Where&nbsp;sh- what should my risk-return ratio be?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Like, people ask questions like&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;one answer, but&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;not one answer because the data is noisy. But&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;okay. We just need to think beyond the trade&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;in front of us. We need to think about hundreds of or thousands of trades in the future and make sure that our method over many trades over&#8211; with a lot of noise and a lot of variability will give us an edge.&nbsp;And&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;interesting is&nbsp;often&nbsp;the edge is not what people expect. You know, when we come out of school, we expect that being right gives us the edge, right? I mean, no one wants to get forty percent in an exam, okay? But you can make tons of&nbsp;money being&nbsp;right forty percent of the time in the markets. And this is a massive mindset shift that most people&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;cope with because if&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;right forty percent of the time, that means&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;wrong on sixty percent of your trades.&nbsp;But if when you&#8217;re right, you win really big, and when you&#8217;re wrong, you lose really small, the&nbsp;math works out that you make a ton of money if you can place enough trades.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we don&#8217;t actually need to be right. We just need to have an edge, and having an edge means we need to often accept being&nbsp;wrong, but&nbsp;make sure that we&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;lose much when&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;wrong&nbsp;and we win a lot when&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;right.&nbsp;So that uncertainty is a real mindset shift, and the variability of the data is a real mindset shift, and we&#8217;ve&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;elevate our thinking from the trade that&#8217;s in front of us to the strategy that&#8217;s driving the&nbsp;trades, and&nbsp;then elevate from the strategy that&#8217;s driving the trades one level further to the portfolio of strategies.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because even a strategy applied over and over again has a degree of uncertainty, and if we apply many strategies that are diversified, non-correlated to each other, then we start to do a lot better, and we start to get more consistent returns.&nbsp;We&#8217;re&nbsp;sort of abstracting away from the uncertainty or the variability, and the portfolio gets&nbsp;smoother and smoother and smoother.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-thu-le-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thu Le<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;great. I think your explanation&nbsp;on&nbsp;the nuance of, you know, having an edge and kind of taking a look at the bigger picture is really, really insightful. And then so with that,&nbsp;I&#8217;ll&nbsp;turn it over to Drew for the next question.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you. Sort of building on that, I wanted to ask how often should you be changing your parameters and\/or copying the automation rules of potentially more successful portfolios? And as part of that, how do you avoid going into, like, the kinds of subjectivity and second-guessing that automated trading is supposed to avoid when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;setting up these&nbsp;different types&nbsp;of parameters?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-5\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;a few bits to that question.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the first part I heard was changing the parameters in your system. The second part was copying other people&#8217;s rules and, you know, automation approaches, and then&nbsp;the subjectivity.&nbsp;So let me cover those in turn because I think they&#8217;re all really important.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The first one is about your own systems. How often should you change your own system to, you know, adapt to the market, to tune it up, to make sure that&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;relevant? And the answer is&nbsp;generally much&nbsp;less often than you would think because what you want to think about is why&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;driven to make a change to the strategy.&nbsp;And usually, if&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got a strategy and&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;proven in the past that it worked, and&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;applying it,&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;generally driven&nbsp;to change that strategy because you just had a losing&nbsp;trade&nbsp;or&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;in a drawdown.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;like, oh,&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;trying to avoid losing&nbsp;trades&nbsp;and&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;trying to avoid drawdown, so let me just&nbsp;optimize&nbsp;this or fine-tune it, change it a little bit or a lot so that it works now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a trap because re-optimizing and fine-tuning or changing the parameters to make the system work now, now&nbsp;as in&nbsp;based on the trade you just took,&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;still the past, and the next trade is still unknown.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the parameters&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;about to change it to may be no better than the ones that you had.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;back to the&nbsp;previous&nbsp;point about the uncertainty and the variability of the markets. We&nbsp;have to&nbsp;accept that there&#8217;s losses and&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;more of them than we would like, and&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;often more frequent and bigger than we would like.&nbsp;We&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to try and keep the losses small to survive. But the key is to develop sufficient confidence in the strategy so that you can trade through a drawdown without being tempted to tinker with it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Because if you change the strategy and then you have a loss, you change the strategy again, you have a loss, you change the strategy again, you end up in this spiral where you just keep going into bigger and bigger and bigger drawdowns, and you don&#8217;t recover because you&#8217;re changing the strategy the whole time.&nbsp;But if you keep the strategy constant, then you have a drawdown. Usually, if&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a good strategy, you come out of the drawdown. But if you change the strategy, now you&#8217;ve got a new strategy, and there&#8217;s nothing to stop&nbsp;you&nbsp;having another drawdown, and then change it again, another drawdown.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;actually a&nbsp;bit of a death spiral.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you keep changing the strategy, you keep going into drawdown, and your account&nbsp;basically just&nbsp;gets whittled away. The key is, is it a good strategy? And&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;something that, you know,&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;a harder question to answer. You need that testing process that takes you through, you know, multiple stages to evaluate the edge and to check that it&#8217;s stable, check that it&#8217;s robust, check that all the rules are significant, check that it works on seen and unseen data on related markets.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s&nbsp;a whole bunch of tests you can do to build that confidence so that when you go into a drawdown,&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;not tempted to change the strategy. So not very often is the answer to the first question. But you need to&nbsp;monitor&nbsp;it often because we want to&nbsp;monitor&nbsp;our strategies and make sure that&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;still behaving the way&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;supposed to.&nbsp;And&nbsp;drawdown&nbsp;is something that every strategy has.&nbsp;There&#8217;s&nbsp;supposed to be&nbsp;drawdown.&nbsp;You cannot avoid it, and if you try and avoid it, you can&#8217;t succeed in trading.&nbsp;There&#8217;s&nbsp;always drawdowns.&nbsp;There&#8217;s&nbsp;always losing&nbsp;trades.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we need to&nbsp;monitor&nbsp;our strategies to make sure&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;not broken. And things can change, so strategies can break.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What can change that causes a strategy to break is all sorts of things. It could be market&nbsp;behavior,&nbsp;it could be market rules. I mean, in the past,&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;a whole bunch of things that&nbsp;have&nbsp;caused different strategies to break. Changes in commission levels,&nbsp;chan-like,&nbsp;changes in the market.&nbsp;So&nbsp;when the markets moved to decimalization from fractions in the share price, that changed things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When high-frequency trading started, that changed things. It changed the way the markets moved, which killed some strategies.&nbsp;So&nbsp;you need to&nbsp;monitor&nbsp;the strategy on a regular basis, weekly to monthly, depending on the duration or the&nbsp;timeframe&nbsp;of the strategy, and check that what&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;doing is what&nbsp;it&#8217;s&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">is within the bounds of normal based on its historical behavior.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we don&#8217;t change our strategy very often, but we monitor it often, and if it looks like the strategy is diverging from how it has behaved in the past and how it should behave based on our testing, then our job is to intervene and ask why.&nbsp;So back to that idea of curiosity. You&nbsp;know,&nbsp;what happened here? Why has this changed? Is it behavioral? Is it, you know, did I make a mistake? Is it&nbsp;more fragile than I thought? Dig into why.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The next part of your question&#8230;&nbsp;So&nbsp;does that cover the first part? You&nbsp;know,&nbsp;how&#8230;&nbsp;Yeah, good.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the next part of the question was, how often should we&nbsp;be copying&nbsp;other people?&nbsp;And I think, look, we all learn from other people. Look at the books over my shoulder.&nbsp;I&#8217;ve got&nbsp;tons of ideas from other people. I read websites, articles, journals&nbsp;about trading. I listen to podcasts. I&nbsp;get&nbsp;ideas.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think that&#8217;s really important. But what we&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;want to do is jump&nbsp;from strategy to&nbsp;strategy to strategy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;trying to do is build a portfolio of strategies that complement each other nicely.&nbsp;So&nbsp;if I read something and find a strategy or an idea from someone else that is a good complement to my portfolio, then I&#8217;ll test it and add it in if it adds value to the portfolio, and that&#8217;s a testing process because not every strategy adds to what you&#8217;ve already got.&nbsp;But if it&#8217;s low correlation, if it adds diversity, if it improves your risk-adjusted performance, if it improves your performance in an extreme market dislocation, then adding someone else&#8217;s strategy is really powerful.&nbsp;Make sense?&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think we all&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;be humble enough to learn from other people, but we&#8217;ve also&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;be skeptical enough to test what other people say and build confidence in it&nbsp;ourself.&nbsp;So just because, you know, some guru or some big name talked about this approach&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;mean&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;work for us. We have to still test it and validate it and still build&nbsp;the confidence&nbsp;in it&nbsp;&#8217;cause&nbsp;it&#8217;s our money on the line. And when&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;our money on the line,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;our emotions that are&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;muck it up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;we have to&nbsp;have absolute confidence in the strategy, so we&#8217;ve really&nbsp;gotta&nbsp;go through that testing process to get all our questions and concerns out so that we can then follow it as if it&nbsp;was&nbsp;ours.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now,&nbsp;I think there&nbsp;was a third part&nbsp;to&nbsp;the question, but I forgot what it was.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, it was just when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;making those calls, how&nbsp;do you avoid being subjective as much as possible?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-6\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Oh&nbsp;yeah, being subjective, the emotional side of it.&nbsp;&#8216;Cause&nbsp;quanti- quantitative trading, systematic trading, algo trading, whatever you&nbsp;wanna&nbsp;call it,&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;all&nbsp;basically the&nbsp;same, you know, similar sort of things.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;designed to take the emotion out. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;in the day-to-day when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;following the buy and sell rules,&nbsp;yeah, it does.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the trader still has the ability to press the override button or to press the eject button, or the stop button, or to jump in and reoptimize the rules like we were talking about earlier.&nbsp;So that comes down to confidence, and I think the&#8230; There&#8217;s a couple of tools that you can use, not technical tools, but processes.&nbsp;The first one is journaling everything that you see and do in the markets and learning from how&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;feeling.&nbsp;So&nbsp;this happened and made me feel this&nbsp;way, and&nbsp;then taking that and turning it into testing.&nbsp;So&nbsp;one of the great techniques that I think is massively underused, mostly because no one talks about it, I talk about it a fair&nbsp;bit, but&nbsp;is&nbsp;backtesting&nbsp;your emotions.&nbsp;And&nbsp;so&nbsp;when&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got a strategy and something happens and it causes an emotional response which makes you&nbsp;wanna&nbsp;react, I step back from that and say, &#8220;All right, what happened, and what was my emotional response?&#8221; And I try and turn that emotional trigger into a rule that I can test. Oh, that stock was&nbsp;way more&nbsp;volatile than I thought.&nbsp;Let me put in a rule to filter out volatile stocks so that I can avoid trades like that in the future and see if it improves my strategy. And when you test these triggers of your emotional reactions, you&nbsp;generally see&nbsp;that your emotional reactions&nbsp;aren&#8217;t&nbsp;helpful.&nbsp;So, oh, this stock is really gappy from one day to the next.&nbsp;Let me put in a rule that&nbsp;eliminates&nbsp;stocks that gap overnight and see if it improves the strategy.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;not doing it to tinker with the strategy,&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;doing it to prove or disprove that my reaction to the markets was real or meaningful. And most of the time, your emotional reactions, you disprove them by doing that because&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;just emotions.&nbsp;They don&#8217;t actually help in the markets.&nbsp;And when you&nbsp;disprove&nbsp;the emotional reaction by analysis, you go, &#8220;Oh, okay, I can just ignore that in the future,&#8221; and it calms the whole thing down.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the more you test your ideas and your hypotheses and your emotional reactions to the market, the more you can just have confidence to let your strategies run.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;doing a lot of testing, but&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;not doing a lot of changing of&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;live in the market because the testing is all about making sure that&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;maintaining&nbsp;confidence.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I test fast, but I change very&nbsp;slow.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was great. Thank you so much.&nbsp;You&#8217;ve&nbsp;really&nbsp;opened up&nbsp;my eyes to like what the world of trading could&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-7\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Okay, cool.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall-2\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a lot more interested.&nbsp;So&nbsp;with that,&nbsp;I&#8217;ll&nbsp;pass it on to Will.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-will-tang\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will Tang<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks, Drew. And thank you, Adrian. It&#8217;s been really interesting to&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;hear how you apply your thinking to different levels of uncertainty.&nbsp;And I actually had a question regarding the actual testing process, if that&#8217;s all right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You mentioned having a lot of confidence in your systems and kind of the mistake of looking at limited sets of data that might appear to work for a strategy that&nbsp;end&nbsp;up being kind of uncorrelated.&nbsp;So&nbsp;what are some examples of potentially dangerous mistakes that you see people make when&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;back testing systems that&nbsp;kinda&nbsp;give them that false sense of confidence?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-8\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s&nbsp;so many mistakes, I&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;tell you, honestly. Some of the biggest mistakes are really driven by trying to get certainty and trying to build an outstanding strategy. You know, trying to build the one strategy that will make you&nbsp;all of&nbsp;the money that you want and generate&nbsp;all of&nbsp;the profits to achieve your goals. Because when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;trying to develop a great strategy, you miss so many good strategies. And the trouble with trying to develop a great strategy is that all you can&nbsp;develop on&nbsp;is past data.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And&nbsp;so&nbsp;what looks great in the past, at best, is&nbsp;probably only&nbsp;going to look good in the future.&nbsp;So&nbsp;trying to develop the best, you know, an outstanding strategy that has a super smooth equity curve,&nbsp;ultra high&nbsp;Sharpe ratio, very low loss, you know, rate of losses, high win rate, big wins, small losses, you can only really do that by overfitting the data.&nbsp;And overfitting the data means your rules are fine-tuned to exactly what happened in the past. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;when you apply them to the future, they don&#8217;t work because they were really precisely tuned to the exact circumstances in the past. And the future is not going to be exactly the same&nbsp;as&nbsp;the past. You know, they say the future&#8217;s, the past performance&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;predict,&nbsp;past&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;predict the future, but it&nbsp;kind of rhymes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I think&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;a good way&nbsp;to think about it.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;going to look and feel&nbsp;somewhat similar, but the exact movements from day to day, from week to week are not going to be the same as they were in the past.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the biggest mistake is really trying to develop an amazing strategy and adding too much complexity, too many rules, doing too much optimization because you end up overfitting and you end up with a strategy that looks great in the past, but doesn&#8217;t perform in the future.&nbsp;The goal of a systematic trader should be to develop a strategy that survives through multiple market regimes and&nbsp;survives on&nbsp;unseen data because the future is unseen.&nbsp;So&nbsp;we need some simple, blunt, robust rules that keep us safe and allow us to capture some profit and allow us to get out before we give all that profit up.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And so good strategies are typically far simpler than most people think when&nbsp;they&#8217;re&nbsp;starting out. And so if you find yourself adding rules and filters and exotic kind of conditions and pulling in lots of different data sources to get consensus, you&#8217;re probably overfitting and you&#8217;re probably not going to end up with a strategy that works in real-time trading.&nbsp;So&nbsp;keep&nbsp;it simple is the best advice I can give. The fewer rules, the better. And the more trades in your sample set that allow you to profit from those simple rules, the better.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-will-tang-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will Tang<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Got you. Thank you so much. I had another question about overfitting. I know a lot of AI and machine learning are increasingly used to&nbsp;kind of scan&nbsp;through data for different patterns and edges that humans might not be able to see themselves. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;do you&nbsp;kind of see&nbsp;that AI&nbsp;as like&nbsp;a genuine edge, or does that risk of overfitting cause a lot of potential issues?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-9\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both. Absolutely both, depending on how you use it.&nbsp;It&#8217;s kind of like&#8230; You know, if you&#8217;ve got a hammer then that&#8217;s a really great tool for some things, and it&#8217;s not a really great tool for other things.&nbsp;You know, a&nbsp;hammer&#8217;s&nbsp;pretty good&nbsp;at hammering in nails and removing nails.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;not&nbsp;very good&nbsp;at&nbsp;performing surgery or tightening a bolt or something like that.&nbsp;AI is really great at some things and really not very useful at other things.&nbsp;So&nbsp;what I use AI for is research to find ideas. So, you know, scour the web, scour social media, pull in what certain people are saying in terms of people I respect or other people that develop systems to give me ideas to develop strategies to trade with.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-10\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;really great&nbsp;at&nbsp;kind of scanning&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;available, looking at papers, and pulling out ideas and rules from finance journals and those sorts of things.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;great&nbsp;at&nbsp;that. If you give it&#8211; If you ask any AI tool for a profitable trading system,&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;going to get garbage. Yeah, because the AI tools are trained on data sets that are public, and if an AI tool is scraping social media and all sorts of random websites and pulling together the consensus kind of answer on what is a profitable trading system, what&#8217;s the probability that that&#8217;s actually right?&nbsp;I mean, if you read every website and every social media post about trading and took&nbsp;kind of the&nbsp;average most common answer, do you think it would be profitable? Of course not, because most people&nbsp;aren&#8217;t&nbsp;profitable in the market. Most people lose money.&nbsp;So&nbsp;asking an LLM to give you a trading system&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;help.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">However, you can give it your process and have it run your process for you to speed you up.&nbsp;So&nbsp;as we speak, Claude Code is doing analysis for me the way I would do the analysis.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;coding up the system rules, and&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;running the tests for me the way I would run them, including all the steps in my process because&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;programmed that.&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;created the skills to do each step of my system development process, and then it spits out a report at the end to tell me whether the idea was any good. And not only that,&nbsp;it&nbsp;looks at the analysis that it did and the conclusions that it found, and it brainstorms&nbsp;new ideas&nbsp;and puts them in at the front.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So that process, I would do that myself, and I have done that for over twenty years now. It just happens faster.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it&nbsp;speeds it&nbsp;up.&nbsp;So&nbsp;it speeds up the discovery. That can speed up the discovery of luck, you know, flukes in the data and so on.&nbsp;So&nbsp;you&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;want to trust that blindly.&nbsp;You know, I have&nbsp;a&nbsp;incubation process which any strategy will go through and&nbsp;I&#8217;ll&nbsp;of course, when I get a strategy out the end after Claude Code has followed my&nbsp;whole process,&nbsp;I&#8217;ll&nbsp;really critically&nbsp;evaluate how that was developed.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Just the same as if a student gave me a strategy, I would very cri-critically evaluate how that was developed and make sure that the testing was sound, the conclusions were sound, that the right ideas were added in, and I might go back and retest certain things.&nbsp;But it&#8217;s a really great tool to accelerate us as quantitative traders.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know, we&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;need to write our own code anymore. I&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;write code anymore. You know, I just kind of give it the&nbsp;i&#8211; the rules in plain English, and it says, &#8220;Hey, you missed this and you missed that,&#8221; and then it codes it up, and then it can run the testing process for me.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;a&nbsp;really powerful&nbsp;tool.&nbsp;In and of&nbsp;itself&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;not an edge. I would say&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;an accelerator.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;an accelerator for idea generation, and&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;accelerator&nbsp;for coding and testing. But I very much doubt that if you plug an AI into an account and said, &#8220;Make me money,&#8221; that it would work yet. But, you know, I could&nbsp;be proven&nbsp;wrong.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I just know that if you have back-tested strategies that have survived multiple market regimes over multiple decades, and the strategies are very robust and stable, then it&#8217;s possible to make great returns in the market, and the AI can help me discover more edges like that. So&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;how&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;using it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-will-tang-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Will Tang<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Gotcha. Thank you so much. That makes total sense.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ll&nbsp;pass it off now to Devika.&nbsp;I think she&nbsp;had a couple of questions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-devika-menon\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Devika Menon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi, Adrian. My name is Devika.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a finance and fintech student at Georgia Tech, and I was just wondering, I know&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;traded through some&nbsp;pretty brutal&nbsp;market environments like two thousand and eight, the twenty&nbsp;twenty&nbsp;COVID crash, and rising rate environments.&nbsp;So&nbsp;could you just describe emotionally what it feels like to sit in a drawdown when your system is telling you to&nbsp;stay&nbsp;the course?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-11\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;interesting, and I think sitting through drawdown is&nbsp;probably the&nbsp;hardest thing traders&nbsp;have to&nbsp;do because no one likes to see their money erode. I mean, when we go to work, we like to get paid, and when you go to work in the markets, often you&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;get paid. Often you&nbsp;have to&nbsp;pay for the privilege in the form of&nbsp;drawdown&nbsp;and losses.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;look, emotionally&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;tough, but what we need to do is develop the resilience to sit through it, develop the confidence to sit through it. And&nbsp;so&nbsp;you do that a couple of ways, and&nbsp;we&#8217;ve&nbsp;talked about testing a lot, so I&nbsp;won&#8217;t&nbsp;go back into that. You really need to understand how your strategy has performed through environments like that, so that when you go&#8211; when you come across environments like that, you know what to expect.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And&nbsp;so&nbsp;a good technique is to look at the equity curve, the back tested results of your strategy in detail. Not just, oh, over thirty years it made, you know,&nbsp;huge amounts&nbsp;of money.&nbsp;That&#8217;s&nbsp;fantastic, and it had a ten percent drawdown. Great, I can cope with&nbsp;ten&nbsp;percent drawdown. You know, looking at the superficial surface stats is not enough.&nbsp;You need to go down to the day-by-day level and the trade-by-trade level and see what actually happened under the hood.&nbsp;Because when&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;at the hard right edge of the chart, and&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;placing the trade and&nbsp;you&#8217;re&nbsp;watching your account,&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;when the emotion comes up.&nbsp;So&nbsp;you test at the macro level, not macro as in macroeconomics, but macro as in zoom out twenty or thirty years of data, right? You test at that level and go, &#8220;Wow, this is great. You know,&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be rich. Woo-hoo.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But then you zoom&nbsp;in&nbsp;and you trade at the micro level, which is, &#8220;Holy shit, I&nbsp;had&nbsp;another loss, another loss, another loss. Oh,&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;in&nbsp;drawdown. Oh,&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;been in&nbsp;drawdown&nbsp;for three months. Oh, is that&nbsp;normal?&#8221;&nbsp;And so&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;all the emotional stuff.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to test at that macro&nbsp;level, but&nbsp;then zoom in and look at what to expect at the micro level, the day-by-day, trade-by-trade, and see&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;normal. Because when&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;seen in the data&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;normal, when it happens, it&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;freak you out, and then&nbsp;you&#8217;ve&nbsp;got the confidence to see it through.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;probably the&nbsp;biggest tip. Go from that big w- long term&nbsp;fra-&nbsp;time frame&nbsp;testing, develop the system so it works, but then really zoom in and inspect and interrogate what could happen. You know,&nbsp;what&#8217;s&nbsp;the best trade?&nbsp;What&#8217;s&nbsp;the worst trade? How fast can these things move against me? How fast can they move in my favor?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How many days in a row? How many losses in a row? You&nbsp;know,&nbsp;how long&nbsp;is the drawdown?&nbsp;H-how&nbsp;did that drawdown look day by day? Do that so that you know what to&nbsp;expect,&nbsp;you can sit through it.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-devika-menon-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Devika Menon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Got it. Thank you so much. That was very insightful and&#8230;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-12\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two great questions. Two&nbsp;very important&nbsp;stuff.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-devika-menon-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Devika Menon<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ll&nbsp;pass it over to Konark for the next question.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-konark-gupta\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Konark Gupta<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hi, Adrian. My name is Konark.&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;a master&#8217;s student studying quant finance and interning at IBKR in the electronic trading compliance team. I completely agree with you. Everyone should have a system, rules, understand&nbsp;risk management in trading, especially with AI help. It has become&nbsp;very easy.&nbsp;So&nbsp;my question is about how AI has changed systematic trading.&nbsp;We all can see AI and LLMs are rapidly entering retail strategy development. As per you, over the next few years, do these tools make your students better system developers or just fast curve fitters?&nbsp;Like what&nbsp;guardrail should one follow while using AI?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-13\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah. I think it&#8217;s a good question, and I think similar to what I said before, it has the potential to do both.&nbsp;It has the potential to make you a better systematic trader, but also to be a faster curve fitter, and we really need to avoid that. And I think the biggest mistake that people will make is completely&nbsp;deferring&nbsp;to&nbsp;the AI.&nbsp;You know, &#8220;Test this strategy for me.&#8221; Okay? If you tell AI to do something,&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;have a good crack at doing it, right?&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;not&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;say, &#8220;No, tell me exactly how.&#8221;&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;look at its information and&nbsp;come up with&nbsp;an approach and have a crack at it, and that may or may not be sensible.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think using it superficially is dangerous and will remain dangerous.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But if you give it the process and you tell it exactly how to do the analysis, then it has the potential to speed up the good analysis that you would do yourself. If you give it a bad process, then it has the potential to speed up the&nbsp;curve&nbsp;fitting, the overfitting, and give you bad outcomes.&nbsp;So&nbsp;the fact that AI exists&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;mean we&nbsp;don&#8217;t&nbsp;need to understand the fundamental principles of solid systematic trading and correct back&nbsp;testing&nbsp;and all of that.&nbsp;We need to learn that so that we can properly drive the tool. You know, if&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be&nbsp;a carpenter, we need to learn how to use a hammer. We need to learn how a house goes together. We&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;just blindly trust the robot to build a house. We need to kind of be able to supervise, I guess,&nbsp;is&nbsp;a similar analogy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;just blindly let AI develop our strategies. We need to supervise it. And&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;our money, so we need to be responsible. And I think, you know, responsibility is, you know, back to, all the way back to the beginning, we&nbsp;talked about mentoring and Van Tharp, who was really big for me in my early days, was personal responsibility is critical.&nbsp;How did I make this happen? What did I do that caused this to happen? And being fully responsible for everything that happens in the markets in our account. And if we abdicate responsibility to AI, then&nbsp;we&#8217;re&nbsp;not&nbsp;maintaining&nbsp;that control and accountability&nbsp;ourself, and it leads too easily to blame.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It leads too easily to being removed from the process and bad results.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think to sum it up, actually learn and understand how to be a&nbsp;quana- a quantitative trader, and then use the AI as a tool with the processes that you&#8217;ve learned to accelerate you rather than deferring.&nbsp;Lots of people are&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;come to the markets without any education and assume AI knows and&nbsp;defer&nbsp;to AI, and I think&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;a mistake. Learn to be a trader first, use the tool, and then&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;gonna&nbsp;be&nbsp;very powerful. I mean, my testing now, the speed at which I can evaluate a hypothesis is so much faster than it was just two years ago. But&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;still using the same process.&nbsp;It&#8217;s&nbsp;just all happening under the hood now.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You know, my back tester&nbsp;doesn&#8217;t&nbsp;even pop up on my screen anymore. It all happens in a silent window&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;hidden. But the same tests are going on that I&nbsp;would&#8217;ve&nbsp;done.&nbsp;So&nbsp;I think we&nbsp;need to use the tool correctly. Does that help? I mean,&nbsp;there&#8217;s&nbsp;so much more to this. We could talk about this for hours, but I think&nbsp;that&#8217;s&nbsp;a good start. What do you think?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-konark-gupta-0\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Konark Gupta<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, that answers well. Like I also have&nbsp;same&nbsp;thought process on these things to have the guardrails and everything intact, and&nbsp;human&nbsp;can&#8217;t&nbsp;be replaced by AI on these things.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-14\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah, we are augmented, right? I think we&#8217;re augmented by these things, and the guardrails are the process that we follow, the testing process, the bounds, the rules about what is safe in the markets and what&#8217;s not, and the rules about how to make optimization decisions.&nbsp;You&#8217;ve&nbsp;got to&nbsp;kind of educate&nbsp;the tool about how you would make the decision so it can make the same decision you would so you can accelerate.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-konark-gupta-1\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Konark Gupta<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you so much, Adrian. I will pass it over to Drew to close us out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall-3\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Yeah. Adrian, thank you so much for joining us and sharing your insights and experience.&nbsp;We&#8217;ve&nbsp;really enjoyed hearing about your journey, your approach to systematic trading, and your perspective on the entire process. We appreciate you taking the time to share your knowledge with us and our audience.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-15\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks so much. Been super fun.&nbsp;There&#8217;s been some really great questions here.&nbsp;I hope&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;been valuable for&nbsp;you guys, but also for the listeners. I think&#8211; Look, in summary of&nbsp;all of&#8211; for all of this, systematic trading is such a blast. It&#8217;s so interesting and fascinating to drill into what drives the markets and how to extract an edge, and also to learn about s- you know, the psychology of how to actually, as a human, step back and let the strategies do their work despite the uncertainty, despite the fear.&nbsp;So&nbsp;if&nbsp;anyone&#8217;s&nbsp;interested in pursuing this path, I would say&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;been so instrumental in my life and&nbsp;it&#8217;s&nbsp;unlocked so many great&nbsp;kind&nbsp;of opportunities, and&nbsp;I&#8217;ve&nbsp;learned so much about the markets and myself by doing this.&nbsp;So&nbsp;keep asking these sorts of questions and look, if anyone wants to pursue systematic trading,&nbsp;I&#8217;m&nbsp;more than happy to answer questions and so on in the future, so feel free to reach out.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-drew-tunstall-4\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Drew Tunstall<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Awesome. Thank you so much. And to our audience, if you enjoyed today&#8217;s episode, please subscribe wherever you download your podcasts from. And&nbsp;we&#8217;ll&nbsp;be back soon.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 id=\"h-adrian-reid-16\" class=\"wp-block-heading\">Adrian Reid<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thanks everyone.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><em>References to third-party products or services by guests are the guest&#8217;s own opinion and experience and do not constitute an endorsement by IBKR.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What does it really take to become a successful trader? IBKR interns put veteran systematic trader Adrian Reid to the test with questions about AI, risk management, backtesting, and building a lasting edge, revealing the lessons every aspiring trader should learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1785,"featured_media":251312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10842,13857],"tags":[16140,21627,7257,912,4873,18480,15696,18924,2099,20449,789,18761,13038,18713,4921,17599,4135,4109,5987,21958,14728,21956,21957,18242,18053],"contributors-categories":[14965,13576],"class_list":["post-251311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ibkr-podcasts","category-podcasts","tag-adrian-reid","tag-ai-trading","tag-algorithmic-trading","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-backtesting","tag-finance-podcast","tag-financial-education","tag-ibkr-campus","tag-interactive-brokers","tag-intern-podcast","tag-investing","tag-investing-podcast","tag-market-analysis","tag-market-psychology","tag-quantitative-finance","tag-quantitative-trading","tag-risk-management","tag-stock-market","tag-systematic-trading","tag-trading-edge","tag-trading-education","tag-trading-for-beginners","tag-trading-mentor","tag-trading-psychology","tag-trading-strategies","contributors-categories-enlightened-stock-trading","contributors-categories-interactive-brokers"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v26.9 (Yoast SEO v28.0) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>The Making of a Trader | IBKR Podcasts<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.interactivebrokers.com\/campus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251311\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Making of a Trader | IBKR Campus US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"What does it really take to become a successful trader? IBKR interns put veteran systematic trader Adrian Reid to the test with questions about AI, risk management, backtesting, and building a lasting edge, revealing the lessons every aspiring trader should learn.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.interactivebrokers.com\/campus\/podcasts\/ibkr-podcasts\/the-making-of-a-trader\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"IBKR Campus US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-28T14:53:28+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-07-28T17:28:44+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.interactivebrokers.com\/campus\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2026\/07\/pod20260709adrian_coverimage.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"563\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"IBKR Interns\" \/>\n<meta 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