Vertical Solutions

Notes on trading system design and the pursuit of automation

The 2x2 State Machine as Trading System

I was taught to set up my quantitative experiments on a 2x2 grid with the first independent variable on the left side (up/down) and the second independent variable on the top (up/down).

A mathematical treatment is given in this pdf and there is an entire book on 2x2's here.

Here's how to transform a 2x2 grid into a trading system that's probably a little different than what you are used to:

- Choose two independent variables with an identified edge, e.g. stocks and bonds

- Draw out the 2x2 grid and add the appropriate buy/sell action to each sell, e.g., stocks down and bonds up = buy, stocks down and bonds down = sell, etc.

- Code the entries and exits so they happen incrementally, adding or subtracting x contracts from current positions based on state.

A nice side effect being that it scales into and out of positions naturally.

Test, tweak, repeat.

As the wise man once said, "A meal for a lifetime."

Henry Carstens
Vertical Solutions
carstens@verticalsolutions.com