Episode 2 introduces co-host Richard Brennan, founder of ATS Trading Solutions and Strategy Ambassador for East Coast Capital Management. Where Simon leads with mean reversion, Richard’s core practice is diversified systematic trend following: ensemble systems trading across a broad global futures universe, sized by ATR normalisation and equal dollar risk allocation, seeking to align with market geometry rather than exploit it.
Richard explains the Outlier Hunter framework that sits at the centre of his approach. Markets are non-linear systems. The bulk of returns in trend following come from a small number of outsized moves, the outliers that no one can predict in advance. The job of a systematic trend follower is not to forecast which markets will trend or when, but to maintain consistent exposure across a wide enough universe, with controlled risk per position, that those rare outlier events are captured when they occur. This is convexity through diversification rather than leverage.
The conversation also covers ensemble design, the rationale for running multiple systems across the same markets simultaneously, and the Cutback Rule as a mechanical mechanism for reducing exposure during drawdowns without abandoning the strategy. Richard draws on complexity science throughout, framing markets as adaptive systems rather than machines to be predicted.
For listeners who have read The Fractals of Finance or engaged with the ATS research output, this episode offers the clearest single summary of how that intellectual framework translates into a live trading practice.
Related reading: Read: The Fractals of Finance Series