Aligrithm is an independent research publication on systematic trading, quantitative research, market microstructure, and adaptive systems. Long-form essays, code notebooks, and architecture breakdowns across eight pillars, built for traders who care more about how markets behave than about hype.
More about the publication →Read in order. Each pillar walks you out of one trap with one new ability. The newest article is the worst place to begin.
FX correlation is a regime that feeds on itself until it snaps without warning. Measure it rolling, watch USD pairs move as a bloc, and use "USDCAD is the truth" only when oil is asleep.
Your currency's driver rotates by regime, so a fixed watchlist goes stale. Granger causality asks which candidate actually improves the forecast right now, run multivariate so the dollar doesn't fool you.
Monetary policy is the #1 FX driver, but it moves currencies through expectations, not the rate level. The market forward-discounts the path, so you trade the surprise: a cut smaller than priced rallies the currency.
A currency is pulled by four global drivers and three domestic ones at once, and the market keeps switching which set steers. Read the regime before the news, or trade the right analysis in the wrong direction.
PPP and the Big Mac index value a currency honestly and time it terribly. A currency stays mispriced longer than you can stay short. Valuation says where, momentum and positioning say when.
A cross like CAD/MXN is two USD legs in disguise, and relative volatility drives it, not macro. Weight the legs inversely to their vol so each contributes equal risk, not whatever the peso imposes.
London opens the trend, New York extends it, then the New York afternoon hands it back. A real intraday bias, measured as sign-conditioned session returns, but easy to fake with bid/ask bounce.
FX runs on a clock set by who's at their desk and which forced orders fire when. The London-NY overlap is cheapest; the fixes are scheduled traps. Trade the session, not the chart.
Volatility and liquidity run inverse in FX: the moves you want come with the thin books you don't, and liquidity vanishes the instant volatility spikes. Defend with volatility-normalized sizing and a hard default to the liquid majors.
Carry pays you the yield differential and rides crowded appreciation up a smooth escalator, then gives it all back down the elevator in a risk-off panic. The killer detail: inverse-volatility sizing maxes your position right before the crash.
A floating currency is worth whatever the market believes today, with no commodity floor and no short-run fair value. Trade macro as a regime gate, and treat central-bank intervention as a jump risk your volatility estimate never saw.
A currency pair is one ratio with two ways to write it, and the priority order decides which. Get the convention wrong and your backtest silently flips half your signs and converts your PnL into the wrong currency.