BUILD THE SKILLS OF SUCCESSFUL
SYSTEMATIC MANAGERS
The spirit of the old gold rush lives on. The tools have changed, but the drive to uncover opportunity remains the same.
TREND FOLLOWING
Markets move in persistent directions. We teach you to identify, ride, and profit from these moves.
OUTLIER HUNTING
The big wins come from the tails. We focus on capturing asymmetric opportunities others miss.
ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
Markets evolve. We build frameworks that bend without breaking as conditions change.
ABOUT
THE OUTPOST
The tools have changed, the markets have evolved, yet the drive to understand price and uncover opportunity remains the same. The Trader’s Outpost exists to share decades of experience in trend following, outlier hunting, and the study of complex adaptive systems with traders and investors who want to navigate uncertainty with confidence.
We explore markets through the lens of fractal geometry and adaptive behaviour. Through reports, articles, features, and podcasts, we translate these ideas into practical frameworks you can apply to your own trading.
Markets reward those who respect their nature: persistent trends, fat-tailed distributions, and constant evolution. Our role is to help you recognise these patterns, position for the outliers, and build systems robust enough to survive what you cannot predict.
Choose Your Path
ATS is not designed to be read chronologically. Follow the route that matches the question you are trying to answer.
Foundations
Build the core machinery: systems, edge, sizing, diversification, drawdowns, backtesting and process.
Explore Foundations →Research & Evidence
Test the claims against data: outliers, fat tails, volatility, path dependence, compounding and robustness.
Explore Research & Evidence →Complex Markets
Explore markets as adaptive systems shaped by feedback, emergence, reflexivity, fractals and changing boundaries.
Explore Complex Markets →Practice
Turn principles into machinery through system architecture, portfolio construction, sizing, rollover and execution.
Explore Practice →Reports & Conversations
Watch the framework meet the real world through market reports, trend benchmarks, podcasts and practitioner discussion.
Explore Reports & Conversations →The Compass
See how the entire ATS framework fits together and choose the route that best matches your interests.
Open The Compass →Outlier Hunting
Most observations do not matter equally. Outlier Hunting is built around remaining exposed to the rare, consequential moves that can dominate long-run outcomes.
THE VAULT
REPORTS
Track what the market is doing, not what you think it should do. Regular updates on trend signals, performance, and the data that drives systematic decision-making.
ARTICLES
Exploring the ideas behind the edge: trend following, outlier dynamics, fractal geometry, and the behaviour of complex adaptive systems.
FEATURES
Selected highlights and announcements. The pieces worth returning to.
PODCASTS
Conversations with traders, thinkers, and practitioners. Long-form discussions on what works, what doesn’t, and why.
Showing: Recent Posts
Portfolio Construction The markets were never independent. They belong to the same system. The purpose of diversification is not to pretend otherwise. It is to make sure no single expression of that system determines our fate. Previous: System Anatomy 3:...
Commodities rallied together, equities paused, and the Barometer completed a round trip the market did not The TTU Trend Barometer jumped 11 points to 50 percent this week, its largest single week gain of the current sequence and enough to...
Every field has a vocabulary, and the vocabulary matters more than it looks. Terms like attractor, ergodicity, phase transition and power law are not decorative imports from physics. They are the precise language required to describe things classical finance cannot...
The Trends That Would Not Hold July was not a quiet month. Markets moved. Some moved violently. Trends appeared, strengthened and, in several cases, looked as though they might finally provide trend followers with something meaningful to work with. Then...
Position Sizing The formula is simple. What it protects us from is not. Position sizing is not an optimisation problem. It is an engineering problem built around one requirement: remain in the game. Previous: System Anatomy 2: Exit Logic |...
Introduction Systematic trend following posted a second consecutive negative month in July 2026. The benchmark fell -1.24 percent, almost identical to June’s -1.26 percent. The headline numbers look the same. The path could hardly have been more different. June was...
When Movement Refuses to Become Trend June was the month of the turn. July was the month when almost nothing stayed turned. For the second consecutive month, every benchmark in the Battle of the Trend Following Indexes finished negative. But...
Exit Logic The entry gets you in. The exit determines what happens next. Two rules. Two different problems. One keeps the mistake survivable. The other gives the extraordinary trade room to become extraordinary. Previous: System Anatomy 1: Entry Logic |...
Entry Logic The entry signal fires without certainty. That is not a flaw in the design. It is the condition under which the entire system operates. Previous: Introduction: The Programme, From the Inside | Next: System Anatomy 2: Exit Logic...
Global futures markets delivered a more selective week to Friday 14 August. Energy led at plus 5.33 percent, with all six contracts higher. Heating Oil surged 9.75 percent, Gasoline RBOB 6.66 percent, Brent 5.95 percent and WTI 5.40 percent, sharply...
The Programme, From the Inside Introducing the System Anatomy Series: seven essays on the structural logic of how a systematic trend following programme is actually built and run, written for the practitioner who wants to understand the mechanics, not just...
“Two investors can run the same trades. Only one of them had to be right about anything.” Compounding is one of those ideas in finance that sounds simple until you actually live through it. A return is not earned in...
My father sat in that chair every evening. Same chair, same angle to the television, same hour, after dinner, when the light through the window turned golden and then faded. Over the years the cushion moulded to him. The armrests...
Previous: Episode 5 – What Works and What We Got Wrong Five episodes, 68 futures markets, 42 years. An empirical audit of the number modern finance calls risk. A Series Synopsis A five-part empirical investigation into whether the number modern...
“An improving environment and a paying one are not the same thing.“ Trend Following Weekly Report Global futures markets turned upward almost everywhere in the week to Friday 7 August. Metals led at plus 6.52 percent with all five contracts...
Inside the Loop: Uncertainty in War and the Markets, Part Two Episode 015 is live, and it brings our two part special to a close. This month Rich Brennan, Jerry Parker and Adam Havryliv are joined once more by Mark...
Previous: Episode 4 Addendum – The Unwritten SequenceNext: Series Synopsis Diversification does not cure fat tails. The controlled experiment, the prescription, and five failed hypotheses. The Evidence Base: Over 640,000 daily observations across 68 global futures markets, spanning more than...
Previous: Episode 4 – Risk Is Not VarianceNext: Episode 5 – What Works And What We Got Wrong Why identical returns produce different investors Three interactive experiments on one objection to Episode 4, and what answering it costs. Episode 4...
Previous: Episode 3 – Six Ways the Assumption BreaksNext: Episode 4 Addendum – The Unwritten Sequence Shuffle forty years of returns like a deck of cards. Every statistic stays identical. The worst loss moves 50 points. The Evidence Base: Over...
“The trend that breaks a portfolio in one month is often the one that pays it in the next; the reversal and the opportunity are the same event seen at two scales.” Fractals of Finance About This Report The ATS...
ESSENTIAL
PUBLICATIONS
Order isn’t built. It’s what remains when impossibility eliminates everything else.
This book reveals why structure, order, and meaning are not created but carved. Reality is shaped by subtraction, as incoherence eliminates everything that cannot hold, leaving only what was always going to remain.
Structure through subtraction
Determinism and free will
Meaning that remains
Markets don’t just move. They evolve, adapt, and surprise, but never without reason.
This book reveals how financial markets behave as living, evolving systems, where feedback loops, emergent behaviour, and adaptive agents combine to create both crisis and opportunity.
Adaptive market dynamics
Emergent behaviour & feedback
Complexity-driven opportunity
Markets aren’t random. They’re complex adaptive systems that produce persistent structure for those who know where to look.
This book explores the fractal geometry underlying price behaviour, explaining why trends persist, how outliers emerge, and where opportunity hides in plain sight.
Fractal market structure
Complex adaptive systems
Trend and outlier dynamics
Stop predicting the market. Start preparing for it.
A practical field manual for systematic traders, co-written with Adam Havryliv. Built on the timeless principles of the original Turtle traders, adapted for modern markets without overcomplicating.
Rules-based trend following
Position sizing & risk management
Outlier capture & survival
DIRECTOR, ATS GROUP
RICHARD BRENNAN
Richard leads The Trader’s Outpost with a focus on trend following, outlier hunting, and the principles of complex adaptive systems. With decades of experience developing systematic trading models, he’s dedicated to helping traders navigate modern markets by focusing on what actually works, not what’s fashionable
TELEGRAMS
FROM THE FIELD
TRUSTED
INDUSTRY PARTNERS
