Trader rulebook
Trading rules of well-known traders, in their own published words. Every rule has a source you can open; what could not be confirmed is shown separately.
Traders
Turtle Traders (Dennis)
Futures traders who taught a written trend-following system to novices in 1983–84
Trend following, breakouts, futures
Ed Seykota
Systems trader, one of the early computerized trend followers
Trend following, moving averages and support/resistance
Qullamaggie
Momentum swing trader of stocks; writes the Qullamaggie blog
Breakouts, episodic pivots, parabolic shorts
Peter Brandt
Futures and FX swing trader since the 1970s; author of “Diary of a Professional Commodity Trader”
Classical chart patterns, daily charts, 1–3 week horizon
Linda Raschke
Short-term futures trader and money manager; co-author of “Street Smarts”
Pullbacks in trends, gap and range patterns, discretionary
Paul Tudor Jones
Macro hedge-fund founder (Tudor Investment Corporation)
Macro, trend-aware, defence first
Druckenmiller
Macro investor; ran Duquesne Capital and managed Soros’s Quantum Fund
Macro, concentrated conviction, liquidity
Mark Minervini
Stock trader; US Investing Championship winner; author of “Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard”
Momentum, volatility contraction pattern (VCP), strict loss control
Mike Bellafiore
Co-founder of SMB Capital, a proprietary trading firm; author of “The PlayBook”
Intraday stock trading, scaling in and out, risk as a share of the daily stop
Richard Wyckoff
Early 20th-century stock trader and publisher; the text is his 1922 book
Tape reading, trend, pyramiding with stops, small share of capital
Andreas Clenow
Hedge-fund manager and author of “Following the Trend” and “Stocks on the Move”
Systematic trend following on futures, volatility-based sizing
Meb Faber
Fund manager and researcher; author of “A Quantitative Approach to Tactical Asset Allocation”
Monthly trend filter on asset classes, long-only
John Bollinger
Analyst and creator of Bollinger Bands
Volatility bands, context before signals
Rob Carver
Former hedge-fund systematic trader; author of “Systematic Trading” and “Leveraged Trading”; writes the blog “This Blog is Systematic”
Systematic futures trading: many trend/carry rules combined, volatility-scaled forecasts
Adam Grimes
Trader, fund manager and author of “The Art and Science of Technical Analysis”
Pullbacks and failure tests, risk first, edge must be named
Stockbee (Bonde)
Momentum stock trader who writes the Stockbee blog
Short momentum bursts: 3–5 day swings after range expansion
Thomas Bulkowski
Chart-pattern researcher; author of “Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns”; his statistics are on thepatternsite.com
Statistics of chart patterns and of stop placement
Edward Thorp
Mathematician, blackjack card counter and hedge-fund manager
Position sizing by the Kelly criterion
Cesar Alvarez
Quantitative trader and co-author of “Short Term Trading Strategies That Work”; writes Alvarez Quant Trading
Short-term mean reversion in stocks with trend filters
Hamilton (Dow Theory)
Editor of The Wall Street Journal who set out Charles Dow’s theory in his 1922 book “The Stock Market Barometer”
Trend, confirmation between two indices, “lines” of accumulation and distribution
Andrew Aziz
Day trader, founder of Bear Bull Traders, author of “How to Day Trade for a Living”
Intraday stock breakouts at the open, VWAP, risk in R
Larry Connors
Trading researcher and author; co-author of “Street Smarts” with Linda Raschke and of “Short Term Trading Strategies That Work”
Short-term mean reversion with a trend filter (RSI of 2 periods)
Gary Antonacci
Portfolio manager; author of “Dual Momentum Investing”
Absolute (time-series) momentum on asset classes, monthly
Brett Steenbarger
Psychologist and active trader; writes the TraderFeed blog
Intraday index trading with sentiment, pivots and a rule-based review
Nasdaq cases
Five written rule sets tested on the Nasdaq-100 through QQQ and its leveraged ETFs. Results are the authors’ own backtests, not our verdict.
ORB on QQQ (Zarattini, Aziz)
Carlo Zarattini (Concretum Research) and Andrew Aziz (Bear Bull Traders); paper “Can Day Trading Really Be Profitable?”
Intraday momentum on the Nasdaq-100 ETF (QQQ) and its 3x version (TQQQ)
200-day + N days on QQQ (Alvarez)
Cesar Alvarez, Alvarez Quant Trading, post of 27 September 2023
Trend filter and market timing on index ETFs, daily
Double 7’s on QQQ (Alvarez)
Cesar Alvarez, Alvarez Quant Trading, post of 10 February 2016; the strategy is from “Short Term Trading Strategies That Work”, written with Larry Connors
Short-term mean reversion in an uptrend, daily
RSI(2) on QQQ and QLD (Alvarez)
Cesar Alvarez, Alvarez Quant Trading, post of 4 March 2015
Mean reversion tested on a Nasdaq-100 ETF and its leveraged twin
UPRO/TQQQ rotation (Alvarez)
Cesar Alvarez, Alvarez Quant Trading, post of 27 March 2024; the strategy was sent to him by a reader
Monthly rotation between 3x ETFs on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, unleveraged ETFs and bonds
Independent studies
Tests and papers by other people about Nasdaq rules: replications, pre-registered studies and academic results. Each one lists what its author could not show.
QQQ ORB out of sample (mericck)
Open GitHub research project (author: mericck), data to September 2026
Opening range breakout on QQQ with a sealed out-of-sample period
NQ rebound after overnight drop
Open GitHub research project (author: talalmalikllc-debug), rule frozen 14 October 2026
A narrow intraday rule on Nasdaq-100 futures (NQ), 25 minutes long
NQ last half-hour (Baltussen et al.)
Academic paper: “Hedging demand and market intraday momentum”, Journal of Financial Economics 142 (2021) 377–403
A statistical result about the last 30 minutes of the day, tested across more than 60 futures including NQ
NQ setups: design vs holdout
Open GitHub project “nq-prop-trading” (author: stefandevelops)
Five NQ setups, two kept and three rejected after one look at the holdout
Rules are our paraphrase of the sources; only short quotes are verbatim. This is information, not advice or a promise of profit.