Why it never ends? (8/8)

Why ongoing research is the only way to stay in the game

Aug 22, 2025

You spent months building a strategy. It works. It survives backtesting, incubation, live trading. It earns its place in your portfolio. And then, one day, it stops performing.

Maybe it starts overtrading.
Maybe the win rate collapses.
Maybe it just… fades.

The worst part? There’s no warning. Sometimes it happens after six months. Sometimes after two years. But one thing is certain: every edge decays.

Markets evolve. Participants adapt. Liquidity shifts. And what used to work, no longer does.

That’s not failure.
That’s reality.

This newsletter is about why your research process can’t ever stop. Because if you want your performance to survive, you need a system that keeps evolving. A strategy can die. A portfolio can recover.
But only if you keep building.

👉 If you want to go deeper into each step of the strategy building process, with real-life projects, ready-to-use templates, and 1:1 mentoring, that’s exactly what the Alpha Quant Program is for.

It’s the full roadmap I use to turn ideas into live strategies.

1. Every Edge Has a Lifespan

No strategy lasts forever, and that’s not a failure

You can build the cleanest logic, test it across regimes, monitor it daily, it doesn’t matter. At some point, the edge fades.

Maybe the market structure shifts.
Maybe too many people exploit the same pattern.
Maybe volatility regimes change, and your timing no longer fits.

Sometimes it’s fast and obvious. Other times it’s subtle, a slow drift in performance, a rise in false positives, or just a loss of clarity in the signals.

And here’s the hard part: You don’t get a notification.
There’s no alert that says “your edge is gone.”

All you see is that what used to work… doesn’t anymore.

It’s not a bug in your process.
It’s just how markets work.

The best strategies are built with this in mind.
Not to last forever, but to deliver value while they’re valid.
And to be replaced when they’re not.

My tip: Don’t get attached to a strategy. Get attached to the process that lets you know when it’s time to move on.

2. Portfolios Absorb the Loss

Strategies can die, your portfolio doesn’t have to

If you rely on a single strategy, the day it stops working is the day your system breaks.

But if you run a portfolio of strategies, things change.

One strategy slows down? Others pick up the slack.
One edge fades? The overall curve keeps moving.
One system flatlines? You isolate it, cut the weight, and keep going.

This is why you don’t just build one idea.
You build many,and manage them like a portfolio.

It’s not about perfection.
It’s about balance and rotation.

A good portfolio survives because no single strategy carries all the risk.
And when one dies, you don’t panic, you replace it.

Monitoring helps you spot it early.
You see the drop in win rate. The increase in drawdown. The change in behavior.
And when the data says it’s over, you act.

The strategy dies.
But the portfolio stays alive.

My tip: Your job isn’t to keep strategies alive. It’s to know when to let them go, and to have new ones ready when you do.

3. The Research Loop Never Stops

Replace. Evolve. Adapt. That’s the real edge.

You don’t control when a strategy loses its edge.
But you do control how prepared you are when it happens.

That’s why research can’t be a one-time effort.
It has to be a continuous loop.

You observe the market
You collect new leads
You test, incubate, monitor
You replace what stops working

It’s not glamorous.
You might test 10 ideas and keep only one.
But that one will matter, because it will be ready when something else breaks.

This loop is what keeps your portfolio alive.
Not the specific strategies, but your ability to create, evaluate, and rotate them over time.

In other words:
Your true edge isn’t any single model, it’s your process for finding the next one.

My tip: Always have something in incubation. Even if your portfolio is working today, assume one piece won’t be tomorrow.

To conclude,

Strategies come and go. That’s inevitable.

But if your process keeps running, testing, monitoring, building, your performance doesn’t have to disappear with them.

The edge doesn’t live in the strategy.
It lives in the system that knows how to evolve.