Adrian Reid explains his trader-focused approach: design rule-based trading systems, backtest them across broad historical crypto price data, and only allocate capital to systems that show stable, profitable historical performance. He emphasizes using software (Amibroker) and data providers (Brave New Coin) to evaluate compound returns, drawdowns, and win rates, then diversifying capital across multiple validated systems to manage risk and pursue reliable wealth growth rather than quick lottery-style gains.
Chapters
The way I think about it is this. I've got my capital, I don't have core holdings because I'm a trader. So I will trade anything and everything.
So I've got my capital and I'll divide my capital between different systems, different sets of rules. But I won't allocate capital to a set of rules until I'm confident that that set of rules work.
And so I'll design a set of rules and in my, in my courses and whatever I have, I provide these traders don't have to do it for themselves because actually the creation of the rules is, is tough. It's, it's not a beginner step. So I'll, I'll create a set of rules and I'll test it. And testing it means you take the rules and you put them into some trading software. I use software called amibroker. Amibroker allows you to take the rules and apply them to all of the price history for all of the tickers that you're trading. So I might get data from Brave New Coin, for instance, which is a data provider that gives daily bars way back, you know, you can get good data back to 2016, 2015.
Across a very broad range of tokens. So I'll take the rules, put them into amibroker, apply them to this data history, broad range of tokens, as much history as I can get, and say, okay, if I'd have traded these rules over the last X number of years, how would my portfolio have looked? Would it have been profitable? Would the growth have been nice and consistent? Or would there have been massive dips that I would have been uncomfortable with? And you can you get the statistics of the portfolio say, okay, my compound annual return would have been this. My maximum drawdown would have been that. My percentage of winners would have been this. You get all of those statistics across hundreds or thousands of trades, and that gives you the insight into whether or not those rules were profitable in the past. Doesn't guarantee they're going to be profitable in the future. But let me ask you this, if I gave you a set of rules and told you, well, I've never made money before.
Do you think they're likely to make money in the future? But if I gave you a set of rules and say, look, I've tested them and they have worked in the past, this is what they produced, it's nice and smooth. Those rules work. Whether I use a 50 day moving average or a 200 day moving average, it doesn't really matter. It's really stable. And up until today, they're still working. Do you think you'd have a little more confidence they'll work in the future? Of course. Right. So the way you test it builds that confidence, and then you've got a set of rules that you can allocate capital to. So I'll allocate capital to many different sets of rules. And I've got a portfolio of systems, and each system has a portfolio of tickers of coins. So I'm quite diversified. So if one of those goes to zero, okay, it's annoying, but it's not going to hurt me financially. The flip side of that is, if one of those goes to the moon, okay, I'm not going to get rich tomorrow, but I don't want a small chance of getting rich tomorrow. I want a very high probability of building my wealth fast over the next several years. It's a different mindset. I'm not trying to get rich quick. I'm trying to get rich with certainty. And I've done very, very well with trading over the years. I'm just trying to continue to build, and that's the difference. Having a hope, lottery ticket, a gamble on a token, going to the moon, that's one thing. Having a set of rules or a portfolio of systems that you have good certainty will make you money over the next several years. And high probability of building massive wealth over the next several years is a completely different thing. That's the one I want.
