The Edge That Wasn

Most books with "algorithmic trading" on the cover sell a system that prints money. This one hands you the losses. The central artifact of the book is a table of broker-verified results — its own — and the frozen snapshot of every recorded trade ships with it, so any per-strategy row reproduces from the raw file.

It is the record of fx-core, a containerized retail FX research project. No single strategy ever ran on more than about a hundred dollars, and most on far less; roughly two hundred dollars was funded across the thirteen broker sub-accounts over the project's life, peaking near a hundred and ninety-nine. The methodology is the subject, not the size of the account.

One question runs through it: is there a repeatable, statistically real edge available to a retail trader in spot FX, and if so, is it large enough — after costs, after tail risk, after the capital required to hold open positions through their drawdowns — to beat a stock-index fund? Eighty-one audited experiments answer it: thirteen positive on their own terms, twenty-two mixed, forty-five negative, and one late survivor retracted.