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Algorithmic Trading

Predictive Analytics in Financial Trading

A disciplined feature-to-signal pipeline with honest, walk-forward backtesting — predictive models built to survive out-of-sample, not to flatter a backtest.

Pythonscikit-learnTime SeriesBacktesting
Predictive Analytics in Financial Trading — illustrative photography

The challenge

Trading ideas looked brilliant in-sample and fell apart live. The usual culprits were everywhere: look-ahead leakage, models tuned on the same data they were tested on, and backtests that ignored transaction costs — producing equity curves that could never be realised.

The process

End to end — how data moves from source to decision.

Market Data
Prices, volume, factors
Features
Leak-free, point-in-time
Model
Trained + validated
Signal & Backtest
Walk-forward, net of costs

Our approach

How we structured the work.

01
Engineered features strictly point-in-time, so the model never sees information that wouldn't have existed at decision time — the single biggest source of false confidence.
02
Trained and validated with walk-forward splits, testing each period only on data that came before it, never on the same data used to fit.
03
Modelled transaction costs and slippage inside the backtest, so the equity curve reflects trading you could actually do.
04
Judged models on risk-adjusted, out-of-sample performance and stability across regimes — not a single flattering in-sample Sharpe.

What the reporting looks like

An illustrative view of the dashboards this engagement produces. All figures are sample data for illustration only — not client results.

Predictive Trading — Walk-Forward Backtest
Sample data · illustrative
+14.2%
CAGR (sample)*
56%
Hit rate
1.41
Sharpe
-9.5%
Max drawdown

Backtested equity curve (walk-forward, net of costs)

Signal accuracy by regime

TrendRangeHigh-volLow-vol

Outcome

What changed
Signals are now evaluated the way live trading actually works — leak-free, walk-forward and net of costs. Ideas that only ever worked in hindsight are filtered out early, and what remains has been tested honestly before any capital is at risk.

Related work

Other engagements with a similar shape.

Process × Intelligence

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