Trading Reality is becoming a curated publication

One desk can’t see it all

Trading Reality is going through a phase transition. Until now, this has been one practitioner writing about execution, market structure, and how systematic strategies behave once they leave research and meet real markets. That continues. But alongside it, the publication is becoming something wider: a place that gathers other voices from across the field — and, increasingly, commissions new work for it.

Here’s why.

The people I want to feature aren’t similar to me or each other, which is the point. One works in the corner of systematic trading that Substack readers rarely see; another is Substack-native; another sits closer to allocators. Different desks, different parts of the process — fitting and validation, signal construction, the production pipeline, how the work actually gets evaluated. No single voice sees all of it, including me.

They also bring their own expertise, their style, and their own humour — well needed, since mine tends to run out in the face of the stubborn strategy developer.

This is not a reading list. It isn’t a digest or a links roundup. Each issue has an arc. The pieces are chosen and ordered to build on each other — the walk-through I’d have been grateful for when I was building my own career, and didn’t have. The selection and the sequence — are mine. You may find value in a piece for reasons different from why I selected it. That’s fine. The work earns multiple readings.

Each issue includes a handful of pieces, some selected from existing work, some written for Trading Reality. Every piece runs with full credit and a link back to the original. I won’t tell you what to make of them; I’ll let them speak to YOU. Not every piece will be for every reader. Maybe the next one will, so “swipe” away at will. But come back and read them in order — you’ll be rewarded for it.

Everything stays free. No advertising, no sponsorship, no payment from any party covered, nothing gated. The work is here because it’s worth reading.

If you’ve been reading, stay with me. If you know someone in the field — practitioner, allocator, builder — forward this to them.

Issue 1 is coming.