Introducing the Take Profits Strategy Subscription

Before I address the topic of this post, I want to provide a little background context for the new initiatives of Blackarbs. If you want to skip to the offer just click this [link].

The Beginning

I started my career in finance, fresh out of college in 2008/2009, at a proprietary trading shop. At that time, I had very little experience trading, but due to the referral of a good friend, in combination with my background in low-stakes no-limit hold-em poker, I was able to land the job. It was an exciting opportunity at the time.

Our training began with a binder containing introductory information about cash equity markets and their function. Our day to day training was centered around screen watching with access to a mentor for questions and trade review. I was told by senior traders that the intraday market dynamics had changed, and many of the previous strategies that used to work were no longer working. Unfortunately for me, this left me without a solid foundation, and my lack of experience forced me to try and learn on the fly.

I did learn some key concepts. Specifically I learned about the high volume at the market open, and the market close which provided the most opportunity and risk. I learned a bit about the concept of differing market regimes which required different setups to trade successfully. However, these concepts remained fuzzy to me and not at all clear.

I struggled through and after a few months, I was able to make 1-3 positive trades per day grinding out a consistent profit for a short period of time. However, this changed when the bosses explained that they required more trading volume from their traders. This was ultimately my downfall, as I compelled to force more trades. This led to winning days turning negative more and more consistently.

Eventually it was clear to me and the firm that this wasn’t going to work and after a year I was gone.

Burnout and Comeback

I left finance for a period. I was actually working at a gym trying to figure out where to go from there. Coincidentally, the gym I worked at was located in a class A building that featured several very large asset management firms. During this period, I was able to befriend a CEO of one of those firms. We used to discuss markets on a regular basis. It was intellectually stimulating and needless to say it rekindled my desire to reenter the industry. But how to go about it was the question. I lacked experience and credentials, having only a BS in Economics.

Through my discussions with this CEO I learned 90%+ of his firm’s employees had acquired the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. I researched the charter and it looked like a way in. The curriculum emphasized a solid understanding of all aspects of the industry and came with professional credibility, so I pursued it.

In 2016 I was awarded the Charter. But where to go from there…

The Blog

I started this blog for several reasons. One reason, was my desire to share my research with others who may be interested in these topics. The other reason, was to serve as a living resume. I hated and still hate the current job search process. I learned quickly that clients and employers prefer demonstrations, projects, examples, and work experience over everything. I also learned that the resume submittal process is a black hole, thus this blog would serve as proof of skills.

Over time my work transitioned from more fundamental based research to quantitative research and programming. Ultimately, I wanted to develop investment systems that removed the discretionary component to trading; especially since that wasn’t my strength. I started learning to program with R, but quickly transitioned to Python once I learned it could be used to build end to end systems. That was in 2012.

Over time my collection of work afforded me many opportunities to work with small to medium sized clients all over the world. It’s been an amazing learning experience, albeit not without its bumps in the road.

After recently completing a couple of large projects, I was again at a crossroad. I had a mentor ask about my live trading experience, which has been minimal since my prop trading days. I’ve invested in some profitable stocks long term but nothing that could be considered active trading. It was an excellent question that forced me to reconsider what my goals are professionally and with this blog.

The New Mission

After deep meditation and consideration, I realized this whole process has been building my skills towards a purpose, even if the route was circuitous at times.

This year, my goal for Blackarbs, is to build a fully automated multi-strategy trading portfolio worthy of personal and professional investment and I want to share it with you!

My initial insample performance targets for this portfolio are a sharpe ratio of 1.5 or better, max drawdown less than 15%, and only 1 losing year every ten years. I aim to develop variations of this portfolio that can scale from 100K to several million.

To support this development effort and still stay true to my original goal of sharing my work, I’ve created a subscription tier for premium content. I’m calling this the Take Profits Strategy Subscription.

Over the next 12 months, every month (including February), I will share one new algorithmic strategy with my subscribers. My goal is to have each strategy be fully functional on the Quantconnect platform out of the box. This will allow you to backtest and live trade the strategy immediately if you choose.

The code will be documented in a way that practitioners can build on and customize the strategy. The code documentation will also provide in-depth explanations behind the purpose and function of each component. I will also provide any additional research documents and notebooks, that helped me in the development process. Ultimately, I will pick the best combination of these strategies to implement in the multi-strategy portfolio.

Over time, I’ve noticed that there is a gap, in that code that is shared by professionals is often difficult to understand if it is shared at all. Thus this is my offer to you.

By creating this offer, it will drive this project forward and force me to build the most robust algorithmic strategies I possibly can, in pursuit of my ultimate goal and for my subscribers.

My first strategy will be released on the last day of February 2020, and at the end of each month that follows for at least 12 months. I may choose to offer those strategies individually, but at increased prices, thus I recommend becoming a monthly subscriber.

If my work has provided value for you, if you want to support the progression of Blackarbs, if you want to receive fully automated, investable strategies, click the button to subscribe now. If you haven’t already, join the [Take Profits Newsletter] to receive a 10% off discount code.