The amount of bullshit in this industry is insane. TikTokers telling you one indicator is all you need. Gurus promising 10x your money every year, or worse, every month. Cherry-picked “track records” that only show winners. And that’s just the dishonest people.

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Then there are the honest ones, and most of them are still misleading you, just unintentionally. They show you a real track record, but it’s three months long. Or six months. Or a year. That doesn’t prove a system works. It proves the system is hot in this regime. Markets give every style its day eventually. If you’re trading momentum and we’re in a momentum regime, you’ll print money, for a while. The only way to know whether that’s edge or luck is to watch the system survive the years that were built to break it. The bear markets. The sideways years. The volatility shocks. The regime changes.

Without that data, you don’t have a system. You have a streak.

If you want to see what that data actually looks like, I just published a free 12-page walkthrough of how I test these systems across 25 years and 16,681 trades, including the months they lost money. It's called The 25-Year Backtest. Free at letters.statsedgetrading.com — it'll land in your inbox the moment you sign up.

I’ve been working in the financial space since 2006. In that time I’ve traded with prop firms, hedge funds, and fintech companies. Along the way I earned my CMT, then my CAIA, then my CDMS, three designations that take years to earn and that almost no one in retail trading education holds. They don’t make me right. They just mean I had to defend the math, in writing, to people who knew what they were looking at.

The biggest thing I took from those 18 years isn’t a trade or a setup. It’s this: the traders and funds that survive long-term are systematic. The ones that disappear after a hot stretch are not. The difference isn’t who’s smarter. The difference is who’s running rules vs. who’s running gut.

That’s what led me to Stats Edge Pro. Let me start with what it’s NOT.

• It’s not a chat room you need to hang out in all day.

• It’s not me trying to be the hot guru of the year.

• It’s not a course you take once and then you’re left on your own.

• It’s not me promising you guaranteed profits I’d rather lose your subscription than make a promise I can’t keep.

What it IS:

• Three systematic strategies, backtested through 25 years of data through 2000, 2008, 2020, and 2022.

• Day trading, swing, and investment timeframes covered, so something is usually working in any market.

• Fully data-dependent. No vibes. No “I have a feeling about this one.”

• Public results. Every system’s win rate, drawdown history, and current performance is on the website.

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There is no perfect system. A lot of people sell that fantasy. It doesn’t exist. My edge is that I run multiple systems with hold times spanning a single day to a full year, combining mean reversion, momentum, and pullbacks. When one is in drawdown, the others are usually working. That correlation profile is what 25 years of testing taught me, you can’t engineer it on three months of data.

Why 25 years? There’s an old trading saying: “Don’t confuse brains for a bull market.” Anyone can make money when stocks go straight up, even just buying an ETF. What matters is how a system performs when the world feels like it’s falling apart. That’s what protects the gains you made in the easy years.

For the record, every system in Stats Edge Pro has lost money. They’ve been in drawdown for stretches. The Pullback System had its worst stretch in 2023 when it was down 23%. The Investment System sat through a 19% drawdown across 2022. I publish those numbers because they’re the numbers. Anyone hiding their drawdowns is hiding what the system actually does.

Stats Edge Pro is not for everyone. If you believe the guru hype, want guaranteed returns, or think a few squiggly lines on a chart will beat the market, keep moving. This service won’t fit you and you won’t fit it.

Stats Edge Pro IS for:

• Traders who’ve tried it all and gotten burned.

• Working professionals who want a life instead of a screen.

• Anyone who’s been burned by gurus and wants rigor instead.

• Long-term thinkers who want to trade with rules, not feelings.

• Traders who believe data makes better decisions than vibes ever will.

If that’s you, I built this service for you.

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Pricing, no spin:

• Pro — $149/mo or $1,499/yr. All three systems. Daily morning emails with entry prices, stops, and time stops. Real-time Discord alerts when prices hit. Sunday “Top 3 Setups” digest for time-pressed members. This is where most members are.

• Elite (Founding member) — $3,000/yr. Everything in Pro, plus a 1:1 onboarding call in your first two weeks, priority response to questions, and quarterly Founders Roundtable invitations. Limited group so the access stays real.

Every paid plan comes with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Try Stats Edge Pro for a month, if it’s not for you, hit reply and I’ll refund your first month. No questions asked. Pause anytime. Cancel in two clicks.

The trading industry is mostly noise. I can’t fix the industry. But I can run one service that tells you the truth about its results, including the bad months, and lets you decide for yourself.

The systems are real. The drawdowns are public. The math goes back 25 years.

Start with the free emails. The first one drops the 25-Year Backtest walkthrough into your inbox. Read that. Read this Sunday’s market plan when it lands. Give yourself a month.

If it’s not for you, walk away knowing more than you did. If it is for you, Stats Edge Pro is $149/month with a 30-day money-back guarantee. No questions asked.

Read the free emails →

— Michael Nauss, CMT, CAIA, CDMS
Founder, Stats Edge Trading

Every month I pull up the monthlies on a handful of ETFs and just look. No indicators, no news, no opinions about Iran or earnings. Just price. It yanks you out of the noise faster than anything else I’ve found.

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Three things that stood out this month:

• The Russell 3000 on the monthly is a clean bull flag. Big push up, 5–7 months of sideways digestion, breakout. If you pretended this was a daily chart you’d call it a textbook setup and move on. But because it’s monthly and everyone just lived through the chop, it feels like the market’s been “straight up.” It hasn’t. It consolidated. Now it’s breaking out.

• Commodities are the one yellow flag. DBC is pressing into prior cycle highs. If it consolidates and pushes through, that’s a potential inflation signal — higher oil, higher rates, harder environment. Not a reason to panic but worth watching as the one notch against a clean bull tape.

• Biotech and regional banks have room. IBB put in a nice consolidation without getting overbought. KBE is building an ascending triangle. Both sectors showing constructive monthly structure, which makes any names from those sectors that trigger through my systems more interesting.

Action plan: once a month, close everything else and pull up the monthlies. Five minutes of zoomed-out context saves you from a month of reactive decisions.

For monthly model portfolios and multi-timeframe systems across daily, weekly, and monthly charts, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we …

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The risk that triggered was there to protect us. At the time, it looked like we were going to crash. And we were one tweet away from doing so. This is how I built the system. To protect first and profit second. Now the market is giving all clear signals for us, so back in we go.

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Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on is completed. Just in case somethi…

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Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple — all tonight. Then FOMC tomorrow with a 99% chance of no rate change but a historically reliable 50% bump in daily volatility. Stack those expected earnings moves on top — ±6% for MSFT, ±6% for GOOG, ±3% for AMZN, ±4% for AAPL — and you’ve got roughly 25% of the entire market’s cap swinging 3–6% while the Fed adds fuel.

Two things worth sitting with:

• Hedge funds aren’t trading today — they’re theory-crafting. Big institutions hold for months to years. Right now they’re running if-then scenarios: if Powell says X, we do Y. If Apple reports Z, we shift here. That means less sustained directional flow today and more chop until the dust settles late week.

• Volatility is not the same as opportunity. Day trading mean reversion systems could feast on the intraday swings. But swing entries and new investment positions? Probably better to wait until the institutional thesis forms — usually 2–3 days after the data drops.

Action plan: if you have intraday systems, today is their day. If you don’t, use the downtime to journal, reconcile trades, or build something new. Not every trading day requires a trade.

For systems built to know the difference between swing days and sit-tight days, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when on…

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Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on…

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We walk through four names on the watchlist: FCEL setting up a base breakout at $9.45, OWLT as a mean reversion play at $4.88 with a defined stop, IVA testing support at $4.99, and IRDM pulling back toward anchored VWAP at $35.50 after nearly doubling. With the market extended after weeks of straight gains, these are the setups sitting in the chamber for when the pullback arrives.

For the full beta strategy table and weekly alerts with entries and stops, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are work…

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Remember to join the Discord room to get real-time alerts when our levels trigger.

Pullback:

Exit Rules: We hold until Monday and then exit our positions. These are more short-term trades, and often, if we feel we got a good price on a pullback, we can use some discretion to hold longer. However, note that these are faster trades that capitalize on market volatility.

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But it is important. Because if you are not in drawdown at some point, you are doing something wrong.

What do I mean by that.

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Every system. Every trading style. Every investment. Every hedge fund. Every part of life has ups and downs. A weight loss journey has plateaus. A strength training journey has injuries. A relationship has fights. A child has tantrums. If you are trading anywhere, or listening to anyone, who is not honest about the fact that they have drawdowns — you have to run. If all they are ever showing you is amazing trades, amazing weeks, amazing months, they are selling you a dream that is unattainable.

Once you internalize that there is no way to do this perfectly, it is actually very liberating.

So let’s take a step back and think about why everyone is so worried about drawdowns in the first place. In my experience it comes down to one of two things.

The first is that they are too reliant on immediate trading wins to fund their lives. And here is the truth — no one in the world can be guaranteed or promised that the system they are trading, the edge they think they have, or the gut feel they have developed, is going to produce profit next day, next week, next month, or next quarter. Nobody. If that describes you, that is the first thing to fix, regardless of where you are in your trading career. Your survival cannot depend on the very next trade working.

The second reason, and I think this is the more important one, is confidence.

When you come into trading and you are hitting the button every day — on your phone, on your laptop, on your six-screen monster machine — and for an extended period of time you watch your account bleed, the next logical question your brain asks is: for how long? At what point, at what time, am I going to be out of this?

For a discretionary trader that is a very hard question to answer. Because it is very hard to track human decision-making back over a long period of time. You cannot really prove to yourself that what you are doing this month is the same thing you were doing two years ago, let alone what it is going to do over the next twelve.

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For a systematic trader, it is much easier. Because we have the data. We have the backtest. We can look at what the system did in every regime the market has ever thrown at it.

That is the whole point of what I do at StatsEdge Pro.

Unless I have seen a system’s data going back 25 years, I do not trust it. Someone could have an amazing real-time track record for a couple of months and that proves absolutely nothing. Markets change. Regimes change. Having long-term, backtested, raw data is really the only tool we have.

When I can watch my systems through 2000, through 2008, through 2020 — I know what to expect for every type of market that has actually existed. And that is what lets me hit the button every single day. Not because I know the next trade will win. But because I know that if the system handled the dot com crash, the GFC, and the COVID liquidation, it will probably handle whatever is next too.

That is the confidence. And that is the thing that carries you through the drawdown.

So if you are in one right now, I get it. I am probably in one too. It is fine. It is supposed to happen. The question is not whether you can avoid them. The question is whether you have the data to trust your process while you are in one.

If you want that kind of clarity in your trading, try trading with systems. Or come have a look at what I am doing at www.statsedgetrading.com.

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The rally is locking people out and the positioning data tells you exactly why. Two datasets paint the picture clearly.

First, the Commitment of Traders. Speculators — the ones who are historically wrong at major turns — got short heading into the lows. They stayed short through COVID, they stayed short through 2023–2024, and they covered right before the tariff tantrum just in time to get short again. They’re not massively short right now like last year, but they’re not long either. Still offside, just not screaming offside.

Second, QQQ ETF flows. People panic-sold their Nasdaq holdings right at the lows on a 3-month rolling basis — the most aggressive outflows in a long time. The thing is, QQQ is just 100 stocks. Those stocks go up whether retail is buying the ETF or not. So the price rips and the people who sold are now watching from the sidelines.

That’s what a lockout rally is. Price moves faster than positioning can catch up. Shorts have to cover. Underexposed managers face career risk. Both of those create a bid underneath any pullback.

Not as strong as last year’s setup. But still strong enough to keep dips getting bought until the data says otherwise.

Action plan: watch COT updates every Friday. If speculators flip long at the highs, that’s historically when the music stops. Until then, the positioning supports the bid.

For systems that trade the data instead of the vibes, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on is comp…

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Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on is completed. Just in case somet…

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Avis Budget Group (CAR) is up roughly 650% in a straight line and it’s not slowing down. This isn’t a chat-room pump on a penny stock. It’s a rolling short squeeze on a name most people assumed was too big to squeeze — and the structure underneath explains why it keeps grinding higher instead of collapsing.

Two forces are driving this:

• The float is functionally gone. A pair of activist hedge funds accumulated the majority of outstanding shares, and at least one fund is locked up until September. Finviz shows 26% short interest on the total float, but when you back out the locked shares, the effective short ratio is closer to 50–70%. That’s GME-level compression on a company worth $25 billion.

• The intraday pattern is self-reinforcing. Every morning, new shorts pile in on the open. Every afternoon, they cover. That covering is the buying pressure, and with a float this thin, it creates a daily squeeze cycle that resets overnight.

The closest historical parallel is the Archegos-driven VIAC run — a leveraged grind that only broke on a news catalyst. CAR will likely end the same way: an offering, a short report, or September unlocks.

Action plan: the correct trade here is no trade. You don’t buy something up 700% and you don’t short something that eats shorts for breakfast. Sit this one out and let the structure resolve itself.

For strategies that avoid this kind of chaos entirely, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on is completed. Just in case som…

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We brought Brandon Kaisler from CESA Capital onto Line Your Own Pockets this week — 19 years in small-cap brokerage, now building his own firm from scratch with a deliberately small client base. The conversation peeled back layers most traders never think about.

Three things that should change how you evaluate your broker:

• Commissions are the distraction. The real costs are locate fees, short interest, and margin interest. Brandon was blunt: brokers make more on those than on commissions. If you’re not modeling total trading cost, your backtest is lying to you.

• Smart routing isn’t free — you’re paying with fill quality. IB’s smart route skips exchange fees by crossing internally or routing for payment for order flow. You save on the ticket, you leak on the spread. Scalpers and API traders should care. Swing traders probably don’t need to.

• The PDT rule dying could dilute your broker’s service. More accounts means thinner locate pools, longer hold times, and less attention per client. Brandon’s response: cap the client count and refuse $5K short sellers entirely.

Action plan: pull your broker’s 606 report. Compare locate costs across two brokers on the same ticker, same day. If the spread surprises you, you’ve found hidden drag on your edge.

For backtested systems that account for real execution costs, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.

Please review the day trading levels and setups below. Our Discord bot will notify you in real-time when one of the levels we are working on is com…

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Nothing triggered this Monday. No swing alerts. Market sitting inside yesterday’s range at 11 AM. And that’s completely fine — because the system already knows every name that could fire before the week even starts.

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Two things worth sitting with:

• Quiet is a signal, not a problem. After a monster rally with consecutive up days, the market just runs out of clean setups. No mean reversion because nothing’s pulled back. No breakouts because everything already broke out. The algorithm isn’t broken — the tape is digesting. Take the cue.

• MTRX is the one to watch. Classic base breakout: strong uptrend, sideways consolidation, and a trigger above $12.31 with a tight stop just below the base. Target is the gap near $13–$13.50. It hasn’t fired yet, but the risk-reward is clean if it does.

The real edge of systematic trading shows up on days like this. Discretionary traders sit there wondering what they’re missing. Systematic traders get an alert or they don’t. No scanning, no second-guessing, no revenge trades born from boredom.

Action plan: if nothing triggers, do nothing. The hardest trade is the one you don’t take — and it’s often the most profitable.

For the full weekly alert list with entries, stops, and sizing, visit www.statsedgetrading.com.