Category Archives: Uncategorized

Top 50 Cointegrated Stock Pairs for September 2026: 34,500 Screened, 50 Selected, Five Years Backtested

September 25, 2026 2:02 pm |

 

Every quarter we re-screen the entire U.S. mid-to-mega-cap universe for cointegrated stock pairs and keep the fifty that earned their place across a full five-year window. The September 2026 vintage of our Top 50 USA Stock Pair Stars is live in PairTrade Finder® Ultimate Alpha 3 today. This post explains how 34,500 candidate pairs became 50, what the fifty did in the backtest, and — because a backtest is only half a story — what the backtest cannot tell you.

Hypothetical backtest results — not live trading, not out-of-sample Every figure in this post comes from backtested signals over the same period in which these pairs were selected. … Read More →

The 3 “Best” Stock Pairs to Trade — That All Lose Money (Tested)

September 20, 2026 11:32 am |
famous stock pairs to trade backtest — KO/PEP, MA/V, TGT/WMT losses vs HGV/MGM winnerFive-year backtest, identical settings: the three textbook pairs all lost; HGV/MGM went nine for nine.

Ask anyone which stock pairs to trade and you’ll hear the same three names: Coke and Pepsi. Visa and Mastercard. Target and Walmart. They’re in every textbook, every YouTube video, every forum thread. Famous companies, obvious rivals, surely perfect pairs.

I ran all three through a five-year backtest last week. Every one of them lost money.

This isn’t a trick. Same settings for every test, disclosed in full below, straight out of our software. And the punchline isn’t that pairs trading doesn’t work.

… Read More →

Pairs Trading Example: The Vegas Pair That Kept Paying for 5 Years

September 13, 2026 1:35 pm |

Want a real pairs trading example instead of theory? Here’s one straight from our platform: Hilton Grand Vacations (HGV) and MGM Resorts (MGM). Two Las Vegas-rooted leisure stocks. One quietly reliable trading relationship.

The numbers: 12 trades, 12 winners

We ran a 5-year end-of-day backtest at $5,000 per leg. The results speak plainly:

  • 12 completed trades — every one profitable
  • Net profit: $3,122 after $258 in commissions
  • Average profit per trade: $260
  • Maximum drawdown: just 4.02%

The equity curve is a staircase, not a rollercoaster.

… Read More →

1-on-1 Pair Trading Coaching: Big Changes Coming to PairTrade Finder® this Autumn

September 7, 2026 1:10 pm |
Announcement: 1-on-1 coaching coming to PairTrade Finder

In two weeks, we launch the biggest upgrade to PairTrade Finder® membership since Ultimate Alpha 3 itself.

For years, you’ve asked for three things: more flexibility in how you pay, more depth in what we offer, and direct access to professional guidance. All three are coming.

It follows the strongest year of evidence in our history — our 2025 live paper-trading test returned +17.4% vs the S&P 500’s +10.8%, with a maximum drawdown of just −3.6% against the index’s −18.8%.* Get the full month-by-month record in the free white paper (signup box on this page).

… Read More →

Protecting Trading Profits: What to Do When You’re Well Ahead of Target

June 28, 2026 11:50 am |
Protecting trading profits

Picture the situation. You are a pair trader with a 2% monthly target, roughly 25% a year. You have just posted three months in a row above +4%. It is August. You sit at +27% for the year, and you have already cleared your annual goal with four months still to run. So what is the correct course of action? The honest answer starts with a warning. Protecting trading profits at this stage is mostly a test of psychology, not strategy. This moment is more dangerous than it feels.

Being well ahead pulls you two ways at once.

… Read More →

Swing Trading vs Day Trading: Which Actually Compounds Monthly Returns With Shallow Drawdowns?

June 8, 2026 12:54 pm |
And What the Death of the Pattern Day Trader (“PDT”) Rule Means for You day trading vs. swing trading

 Most trading careers don’t end in a dramatic blow-up. They end in attrition: an equity curve that grinds sideways with violent swings, a strong month handed back to one overnight gap, an edge quietly eaten alive by spreads and slippage, and a trader burned out from staring at screens for outcomes that never compound.

If that pattern is familiar, the usual question — “which style suits my personality?” — is the wrong one. That’s the amateur’s question. The professional question is colder: which trading style is structurally built to deliver a compounding monthly return,

… Read More →

Trading for Beginners: How to Start Without Getting Wiped Out by the Next Bear Market

May 30, 2026 8:58 pm |
Trading for beginners

 

Between 2020 and 2024, the number of UK adults using an investment platform jumped from 4.4 million to 7.9 million — an 80% leap in just four years (Investment Trends / FCA data). At the same time, mandatory FCA risk disclosures show that 71% to 79% of retail CFD traders lose money at the UK’s largest brokers (IG 71%, CMC 76%, eToro 77%, Plus500 79%).

Two numbers, one uncomfortable question for anyone asking how to get into trading: if so many people are piling in, why are so many losing — and what are the survivors doing differently?

… Read More →

Market-Neutral Pair Trading in Action: May 2026 Top 50 USA Stock Pair Stars

May 11, 2026 4:52 pm |
market-neutral pair trading

Most retail trading strategies depend on direction — and direction is the one thing nobody can predict consistently. By contrast, market-neutral pair trading offers an alternative: trades constructed not on whether a market rises or falls, but on the relationship between two fundamentally related assets. As a result, when that relationship temporarily diverges, mean reversion offers a measurable, repeatable edge.

Your Shortcut to Market-Neutral Pair Trading Success

This May, after another quarter of research, recalibration, and statistical validation, we are releasing the May 2026 Vintage of our Top 50 USA Stock Pair Stars.

… Read More →

What Is Automated Trading? A Simple Introduction to Systems, Strategies & AI

May 3, 2026 10:08 am |
automated trading

As CEO of Equilibria Technologies Ltd., the publisher of PairTrade Finder® software, I’ve spent the last decade helping traders move from manual screen-watching to professional-grade automated trading.

The software was originally created by Jared Mann in Sydney, Australia back in 2008 as a pure statistical-arbitrage tool for serious pairs traders. What started as one man’s code in a Sydney apartment has grown into a complete platform that thousands of traders and institutions have and continue to rely on every day.

So what exactly is automated trading? In plain English, it’s the use of computer programs to execute trades based on rules you define upfront.

… Read More →

OU Half-Life Filter for Pair Trading

April 26, 2026 9:52 am |
Faster Reversion = Better Profits in PairTrade Finder® UA3

One of the biggest hidden risks in pair trading isn’t finding a cointegrated relationship. It’s trading a pair that reverts too slowly to be profitable before costs, time decay, or market drift eat your edge.

That’s exactly why we’re adding the OU Half-Life Filter to PairTrade Finder® Ultimate Alpha 3. It’s a simple, powerful new layer that tells you how fast a spread will snap back — so you only trade the pairs that can actually make money in real-market conditions.

OU Half-Life Filtering in Pair Trading

Why Many Pairs Fail in Live Trading (Even If They Pass Backtests)

You run the scanner.

… Read More →