Merry Christmas, here's some genuine free alpha that you can use
Funding Rate vs Realized Drift
automation not required
most of y'all think of the funding rate like RSI; negative = oversold, positive = overbought
but you're wrong, it's way more specific
the funding rate on most exchanges is determined by taking the average difference between the perp price and spot asset price over [n] as a %, multiplied by n/24, where n is the number of hours per funding period. Sometimes + a default rate.
What this means is that over 24 hours, longs or shorts have to pay their counterparties the cost of the average premium or discount of the contract. This ensures that the contract stays roughly aligned w spot price.
I think the biggest misconception I had about "doing quant stuff" when I first started it was thinking that I needed to automate or code everything
code is helpful, but spreadsheets, tradingview indicators and maybe some really basic CLI/terminal tools will get you v far
the second-biggest misconception was that I needed a super-secret complex strategy to compete
in reality most of the mechanical/quant guys I've talked to (incl myself) just kinda found some basic inefficiencies or cheap risk to make money from regularly
it's not usually v fancy
like, my MM strategy basically boils down to placing ltf "stink bids" and hope somebody fat-fingers a market order so I can buy cheap, then sell at fair price for a small profit
also as a side note, imo the coolest thing about making money is the leverage that it offers on the world around you
idc what that happens to be for you, could be charity, funding new startups, research, sponsoring an open-source dev, literally anything
but I'd encourage those of you with spare $ to try and use it to make stuff happen, whatever that stuff happens to be
turn the numbers on the screen into tangible impact somewhere, especially if you've hit the point where making money for money's sake has gotten boring
here's one of my current synthetic long/short portfolio accounts (this one is a self-contained portfolio)
long 77.6% $BTC
long 151.1% $SOL
long 2.8% $ETH
short 90.4% $SRM
short 31.2% $ADA
I rebalance it every [redacted] w the goal of being 1x "long crypto"
there's plenty of ways to achieve this, but I share to illustrate one of the ways that leverage can be used effectively; to balance positions against each other in order to meet a certain portfolio goal
also, I am not always long crypto lol, if I'm bearish I will change the target exposure closer to flat or negative
I regularly run accounts at 3-8x leverage, not to over-size but to reduce the amount I have to keep on exchanges
but this means a bit of extra management. While trades might be sized properly, it's important to consider liquidation risk
while these accounts are usually hedged to some degree (either capturing basis/funding or doing some form of pair/beta trading), even if I'm sized to lose small on a loss, the total margin is also at risk if the trade goes sideways, which means there's a risk of losing bigger
if you're operating efficiently, you're likely using non-USD collateral for trades
it's important to consider the range of potential drawdown from a particular trade IN TANDEM WITH the range of drawdown potential on your actual collateral
in a thread-writing mood (aka I'm bored and definitely not doing drugs)
So let's talk about volatility:
-what it is
-how it's calculated
-how it might be useful to point & click traders
What it is: in plain terms, volatility is a measure of how much a trading pair's price bounces around the benchmark value, which is usually set to the average closing price.
A trading pair that spikes and drops by a lot around its average price is considered volatile.
To calculate volatility we'll start with a price average. For this example we'll use a 3D average price (calculated from closing price) of BTC perps.
From October 6 through November 8, the average closing price was $64,189.