Various Trade Mechanics
The market picks the strategy so you don't have to.
VTM runs fourteen strategies and reads the market's condition to decide which of them deserve capital right now — scaling up what fits, standing down what doesn't. Every strategy is measured against the same standard — backtesting, Monte Carlo and out-of-sample testing where its data allows, then paper testing against the live market — and where one hasn't cleared a stage, we say so.
How it works
Most tools ask you to pick a strategy. VTM asks what today needs.
A strategy that prints money in a bull market can bleed for a year in a bear one. The usual answer is to pick well and hold on. VTM's answer is to keep a roster of mechanically different strategies and let conditions decide which ones are allowed to trade.
Classify the regime
Every session, the market is classified into one of four states — bull, neutral, bear or crisis — from trend and volatility, not from opinion.
Set each posture
Every strategy holds a posture for every regime: full size, reduced, or stood down entirely. The regime sets the posture; nothing is discretionary.
Publish the signals
Strategies that are permitted and find a setup publish a complete signal — what to trade, where to enter, and how the trade ends. Everything else reports why it is quiet.
You decide
VTM never places a trade for you and never touches your broker. It shows the work; the account stays entirely yours.
The roster
Fourteen strategies, and exactly where each one fits.
Each earns its place by covering a condition or a horizon the others don't. Exact entry and exit logic isn't published — what matters to you is the role each one plays and which regimes it's built to trade in. Where each strategy's returns come from, and who is on the other side paying them, is set out in The Other Side.
Strategy of the week
One strategy at a time, in its own words.
The roster tells you what fourteen strategies are for. Each week we take one of them — on rotation, not by whoever had the best week — and describe what the market actually did to it.
This week · Spike Short
Most weeks, Spike Short does nothing at all. That's the design. It exists for one rare event: a small stock that goes vertical in a single session on nothing durable, then gives most of it back.
Inside VTM
What you actually get.
Not a walkthrough video — the real screens, in miniature.
- Trend engines
- FULL
- Income strategies
- FULL
- Downturn hedges
- STOOD DOWN
- All-weather basket
- FULL
- Structure
- Call calendar
- Net debit
- $1.18
- Defined risk
- Yes
Weekly track. Regime: Bull — full size.
Which regimes your selection actually covers — and where the holes are.
- Bull
- COVERED
- Neutral
- COVERED
- Bear
- THIN
- Crisis
- NONE
Questions
The questions worth asking first.
Does VTM trade my account?
No. VTM never places a trade, never connects to your broker, and never holds your money. It publishes the regime, the postures and the signals; every decision and every order is yours.
Do you publish performance numbers?
No — and that's by design, not a placeholder. A performance curve is the one thing you can't verify before you subscribe; it can always be the flattering cut of the story. Instead, every strategy goes through the same sequence: backtesting, which is good at ruling ideas out and weak as proof; Monte Carlo testing where the strategy allows it; out-of-sample testing on periods its design never saw; and then paper testing that tracks the live market, session by session. The signals VTM publishes come from that same account, so what you receive is what the record is built from.
Not every strategy has cleared every stage, and the stage isn't a ranking. One couldn't be backtested at all, for lack of historical data. Others are finished and waiting for the market conditions they exist for, which is the next question. Where either applies, we say so. The mechanism and counterparty reasoning behind each strategy are laid out in The Other Side.
Why would I pay for a strategy that isn't trading?
Because a hedge that trades constantly isn't protecting you — it's just another strategy competing for the same gains as everything else on the roster. The downturn strategies are built to stand down for as long as the market stays healthy and hold their full size for exactly the conditions they exist to cover. You're paying for them to be built right and ready the moment that call comes, not for constant activity — which is why they're sold together as a bundle rather than individually.
That also means three of them — Downside Engine, Portfolio Ballast and Range Break — have not yet traded in the conditions they exist for, because there hasn't been a bear or crisis market since they were built. That can go on for years, and we won't keep them off the roster waiting for it. Until then, what stands behind them is what can be checked without one. Downside Engine and Portfolio Ballast were tested against past downturns in historical data. Range Break could not be, because the historical options data it would need isn't available to us, so its structure was checked against live market prices instead. All three have had their entry logic run under forced test conditions to confirm it actually executes. What none of them has yet is a record of trading through a real downturn, and we'll keep saying so until they do.
Is this financial advice?
No. VTM is research and signal software. Nothing on this site is a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and nothing here is personalised to your circumstances. See the full disclaimer.
What happens when the regime changes?
Postures change with it, on the next classification. Strategies that lose permission stop producing new entries; strategies that gain it come back to full or reduced size. You see the change on the dashboard, with the classification behind it.
Pricing
Every tier sees the reasoning. Paid tiers see the trade lists.
Illustrative pricing — final numbers may change before launch. Nothing is charged today; every button below joins the waitlist.
Dashboard
The regime reasoning, always
$0 /mo
- Live regime classification
- Per-strategy status board
- No trade signals
Base
Pick a curated 4-strategy basket
$49 /mo
- Everything in Dashboard
- Trade signals for your basket
- Portfolio-level risk guardrails shown
Add-on
Per additional strategy
+$19.99 /mo each
- Layer onto any Base subscription
- Fill a specific regime or cadence gap
- Cancel any single add-on independently
Full Access
Every strategy on the roster
$99 /mo
- All fourteen strategies
- Both bundles included
- Complete regime coverage
Snapback
Bundle 01 — when something overshoots
$39.99 /mo
- BMBTD, Spike Short, Range Break
- Three strategies, one shared capital allocation
- All three fade a dislocation, from different sides
- Staggered by regime, so they rarely compete for capital
Downside
Bundle 02 — when the market turns
$39.99 /mo
- Downside Engine, Portfolio Ballast
- Two strategies, one shared capital allocation
- Both stand down in a bull market, by design
- The crisis coverage no Base basket includes
* Not included in any Base basket — available only as an Add-on or with Full Access.
† Crypto Core holds a spot-Bitcoin ETF as a permanent position and carries
materially higher volatility than anything else on the roster. Read the full
notice on its row before adding it.
Early access
See what today's conditions actually favour.
VTM isn't open yet. Leave your email and you'll get a confirmation now, the launch date a week ahead, and your login link the day it opens.
Joining early comes with a thank-you: 10% off your first payment on any paid tier. Your code arrives with the launch email.