The Need for the Quantitative Collaborative

In this brief post, I wanted to share why there is a real need for my Quantitative Collaborative program. Briefly, the Quantitative Collaborative is a next-generation real-time collaborative effort to build trading systems and an in-depth course on building trading systems, it is packed with worksheets, narrated screen captures, source code, and trading systems.

In order to understand the need, let’s look at the alternatives:

1. Join a top tier hedge fund or prop firm. Not an option for most!
2. Go solo. Many downsides including you cannot share your work to get new insights, cannot multiply efforts, cannot learn from others, do not have any support environment. Not a good option for most!
3. Try to develop your trading through journals in public trading forums and discussions. Most posts are from traders with less than 6 months experience, anything you post will be in the public domain (no control over the network) will erode any edge or cause you to constantly need to self-censor yourself, many are toxic environments, payed vendors will work to undermine you behind your back, and if you ever link to your work then you will be banned. Some have likened this model to the “sharecropper” model where the forum owners get all the value while the members provide all the value for free. In my experience, trading forums are useful for general knowledge, keeping up with current events, perhaps– but not a smart or viable option for developing oneself as a trader.
4. The trust model. In this model, you pay a mentor or guru or join their room. If you could find the right mentor with a good fit then this model makes a lot of sense. The reality is that this is very low probability because many of the rooms have been known to produce fabricated reports, not make clear calls or any calls, etc. The second problem is that there is always an asymmetrical relationship. The mentor needs to keep his most important edges confidential. There is almost always some information hidden from you. You can try your luck but the odds of finding a legit room are heavily stacked against you. It is not the worst model but won’t work for most.
5. The pay and pray model; otherwise known as “tryouts”. In this model, a prop firm which claims to care about “helping traders” wants you to pay money to play to trade on the simulator. You are left to pay to try to hit unrealistic or top end performance targets while praying the prop firm will fund you and help you become successful. They might also dangle the opportunity to “trade on a floor” or “work with our traders” when you pass the program. This model might be for those who cannot adhere to their stop losses but is a step back for everyone else. The model is flawed because your placing all your chips in another-– in this case, one who clearly is too lazy to come up with a better program then you paying for tryouts.
6. The pay for research model, i.e. newsletters. You pay a high fee each month for news letters that is supposed to give you an edge. The problem is that most of these edges are not well-researched or have small sample sizes, some develop proprietary indicators which you cannot access the internal logic too, etc. While it sounds good, reality is that without an intimate understanding of the edge then it is not likely to help you. This model is too little, too late, and antiquated for today. This is based on old school publisher model, like magazines. When was the last time you bought an actual magazine? One problem with this model is that it assumes that an edge is all you need-– but in reality traders need supportive environments which can foster growth over time.

Let’s see how the Quantitative Collaborative completely trounces all the other models for generating transformational value for traders:

1. The exclusivity means the risk of sharing your edges is significantly reduced. The general public never gets access to our work. The small network increases the probability that others will share true value.
2. You never have to trust me because you get my open research, source code, etc. You can decide what is worth it or not, make it better, and share it back to the group in real-time. This is not a mentorship model.
3. Unlike the pay and pray model, this model encourages you to take responsibility for your own success by actively participating and contributing from day one. There is both a broad research toward discovering edge but “active” focus projects too– at any given time. This way there is a degree of freedom– but at the same, there is a structure and a focus.
4. Unlike with newsletters or other programs, you get everything open source, you see the work progress, you see my mistakes even, you can help with your own research, and we working to build fully algorithmic systems. Yes, you get the basic research but we take it to the next step to refine it into actual systems with higher return.

The Quantitative Collaborative is not a model for most though! It is for serious traders who are ready for transformation and prepared to do significant work over time, with no guarantees, in a structured environment toward building futures trading programs.