Current Futures & FX Positioning (All positions are long)
YTD PERFORMANCE UPDATE
- Macro Ops Futures, Commodities and Currencies +21.74% YTD
- S&P 500 +4.96%% YTD
- Outperformance +16.78%
There’s a hole in your strategy.
Whether you’re a self-directed trader, a family office allocating across multiple books, or running a lean hedge fund, you’re probably strong in one regime and weak in another.
Most of the Macro pros I know excel during a crisis.
They hedge well, protect capital, and spot inflection points when everyone else is frozen. But they underperform in the larger vol-suppressed equity bull markets.
And we all know the truth:
The market spends most of its time going up.
Not crashing. Not panicking. Just… rising.
So the process edge that saved you during the 2008 crisis, or March 2020, or the banking panic of 2023… that edge quietly underperforms during the other 80% of the cycle.
Which brings us to this.
You Don’t Need a New Strategy. You Need a System.
Not a tip. Not a signal service. Not another indicator.
You need a system, a machine that runs when your brain wants to wait.
One that thrives when volatility drops, price grinds, and narratives shift from panic to complacency.
You need to layer a systematic framework on top of your existing process.
Because the real game?
It isn’t picking the top. Or bottom.
It’s playing every regime with a system that fits the particulars of that regime.
The System: 4 Simple Strategies That Do What They Say
You don’t need complexity. You need structure.
Here’s the core structure:
- Fast Trend (2–15 days) – Captures early momentum. Think “first move” out of a regime shift or mini panic.
- Slow Trend (3–12 months) – Holds long-term winners. Rides the wave when everything’s working. Think sector rotation, regime confirmation, convexity.
- Fast Mean Reversion (1–10 days) – Your income engine. Clips profits from short-term dislocations. Think Bollinger Band fades, volume imbalances.
- Slow Mean Reversion (1–12 months) – The quiet killer. Buy the dip. Low beta, low correlation, high signal.
Together, these strategies give you full-cycle exposure.
Bull, bear, sideways, panic, euphoria.
You’re not guessing. You’re executing.
The Structure: Blend Don’t Break
This isn’t about becoming a quant.
It’s about owning a systematic engine that runs in parallel to your discretionary process.
The simplest setup?
- 60% of risk goes to the systematic book.
- 40% stays with your discretionary or macro process.
- Within the system, split evenly: 25% each across the four strategies.
Dynamic Regime Overlay
Volatility isn’t static. Neither are your weights.
When markets calm down, mean reversion gets more capital.
When volatility spikes, trend gets the green light.
Use regime models (SQN indicator, VIX, credit spreads, yield curves) to guide sizing.
This isn’t market timing. It’s adaptive allocation.
Discretionary Vetoes (With Accountability)
You can override your system, occasionally.
But you better be right.
Every veto gets tracked. If it doesn’t beat the system >60% of the time, veto rights get pulled.
No ego. Just accountability.
The Edge: Why It Works
In bull markets, it earns.
In flat markets, it clips.
In panics, it protects.
From 2009–2021, global macro strategies underperformed because the market wouldn’t break. It just kept grinding higher.
Meanwhile, systematic trend and reversion models kept working.
Fast mean reversion delivered steady income.
Slow trend quietly rode tech, growth, and winners to outperformance.
When crisis hit, slow trend and market-neutral reversion stepped in with negative correlation and convex returns.
This isn’t theory:
- Multi-strat funds hit 13.6% average returns in 2024.
- Sharpe ratios >2.0 over five years.
- Crisis alpha in 16 of 17 downturns since 1927.
You’re not guessing anymore. You’re playing the whole field.
The Risk: Controlled, Measured, Scalable
- Max portfolio volatility: 20%
- Drawdown hard stop: 12%
- Adaptive sizing after 4%, 6%, 8% loss levels
- Real-time VaR, Expected Shortfall, correlation monitors
- Diversification ratios tracked and enforced
- Position limits, sector caps, leverage thresholds, coded in
Risk isn’t managed at the end. It’s designed at the beginning.
What You Get
- 15–25% return potential in bull regimes
- Crisis protection that adds, not subtracts
- Sharpe ratio >1.2 at portfolio level
- True diversification, not just by asset, but by behavior
Final Word
Most traders never build the system that works when they’re not watching.
Most allocators wait too long to diversify their process.
Most funds underperform because their edge is stuck in one regime.
Don’t be most people.
Build this. Or partner with someone who has.
Because the edge isn’t in what you know, it’s in how consistently you can apply it when conditions change.
Let me show you how we are using this right now.
Starting off the second half of 2024, the equity markets were at all time highs and we had been long, very long, building our long positions from the August “crash” bottom.
Our fast mean reversion system went long.
Then the slow mean reversion system went long.
Then the fast trend system went long.
Then the slow trend system went long.
Then we got the exit signal by mid December.
From mid December to the bottom of the correction in April, we were completely flat equity indices.
That period is where the Macro investor is meant to outperform.
Our systematic portfolio was mostly long Gold
And short Crude
Then came the big capitulation in April, “Liberation day”.
You can be excused for getting caught up in the headlines and the chaos of the tariffs. But you don’t have to lose money because of it.
Too many people made emotional bets and were too blind to the trade that was perfectly set up.
The systems don’t get emotional, they don’t get caught up in the drama of the headlines… The system just does what it is designed to do.
And we went long the slow mean reversion system in S&P 500…our risk management system couldn’t size a trade for the fast mean reversion system.
Treating Nasdaq 100 as more exposure to equity indices, we added to our long positions buying the fast trend and slow trend on NQ futures.
We also bought Crude Oil, Bitcoin, Euro, Swiss Franc, and the Mexican peso.
We are still long those assets.
At this point, there are no systematic exit signals; the regimes are all neutral or bull quiet, which is where we are rewarded for patience, as we are at all-time highs in the indices.
No exit in sight, but we will always follow the system if it changes.
All of these trades are posted live in the Collective; you can join us here.
If you are interested in the strategies that I use.
And you can work with me on building out your trading business in the Trading Thunderdome (we’re starting a new cohort next week).
