The Quant Desk

A fleet of Python trading bots, a small real-money account, and a year of honest results.

The Quant Desk documents what it actually takes for a UK retail trader to find a small, durable edge with automated trading. Every strategy is backtested on years of real minute-level data with full spread costs, run at minimum stakes on IG spread betting, and promoted or killed on evidence, not conviction.

Most ideas die in testing. You will see the kill list, the traps that fooled me (look-ahead bias, impossible fills, data artefacts), the R-logged live results, and the whole fleet running from an iPad in tmux.

What you will find here:
• Backtests of popular strategies, with the real numbers
• Weekly fleet scorecards in R
• Trading bot builds and automation breakdowns
• The failures, documented properly and honestly

Nothing here is financial advice. Over 70% of retail accounts lose money. This channel is about my journey to try to be in the 30% minority with data, testing and discipline.