
Arena Blog
Data-driven insights on trading strategies, backtests, and market analysis.
13–24 of 46 posts · page 2 of 4
How ETFs Actually Work — and Who's on the Other Side
An ETF trades like a stock but is really a basket. Why does its price stay glued to the basket's value? An invisible arbitrage crew. How ETFs work, who's on the other side when you buy — and which counterparties (swap, securities lending) almost nobody sees.
How Volatility (VIX) Futures Work — and Who's on the Other Side
Volatility futures don't trade a price — they trade expected movement, fear itself. How the VIX works, why you can't buy it directly, who sells the crash insurance, and why "Volmageddon" shows how dangerous the other side can get.
How Perpetual Swaps and Funding Work — and Who's on the Other Side
The perpetual is crypto's most-traded derivative — a future that never expires. To stop it drifting from spot, longs and shorts pay each other funding. How it works, who's really on the other side of your leveraged long, and why funding flips whole strategies.
How CFDs Work — and Why the Broker Is on the Other Side
With a CFD you never own the underlying — you make a difference bet with your broker. That's what makes the other side delicate: depending on the model, the broker profits from your loss. How CFDs work, what the EU rules changed, and what really matters.
How Warrants and Knock-Outs Work — and Who's on the Other Side
Warrants and knock-out certificates are huge in German-speaking markets — and no instrument makes the other side this tangible: here the issuer is the seller, the market maker and the one quoting the price. How they work, what they're for, and why the barrier and issuer risk decide everything.
How Options Actually Work — and Who's on the Other Side
Most people meet options as a lottery ticket. That hides almost everything that matters — including who sells you the call and what they do next. How options work, what they're for, and why dealer hedging (gamma) can either calm the market or accelerate it.
How Futures Actually Work — and Who's on the Other Side
Futures sit underneath a huge share of what moves markets — yet most explanations stop at "a bet on price." What a future really is, what it's for, and the part almost nobody explains: who takes the other side, and how they manage the risk.
SQN, Expectancy, Profit Factor — the new backtest result panel
Win rate alone says little. The new Details tab shows four metrics serious backtester care about: SQN, Expectancy, Profit Factor, and a monthly/yearly breakdown of every trade.
The Bitcoin Power Law, in Plain English: What Holds, What Doesn't
There's a way to draw Bitcoin's price that turns fifteen years of booms, crashes and mania into something almost boring: a nearly straight line.
The Invisible Settlement Layer: Bitcoin, Stablecoins, and the Kill Switch
The most consequential Bitcoin payments story of the past year isn't a price chart. It's a transaction you'll never see.
Nobody Sees the Future — Why No AI Trading Tool Can Beat the Market
LLMs don't trade profitably. But why would anyone expect them to? The honest answer is uncomfortable: nobody can see the future, and markets are explicitly the opposite of a forecasting machine — they're a mechanism for the ongoing negotiation of disagreement. On the Grossman-Stiglitz paradox, why one side of every trade is convinced it's smarter than the other, and why AI trading tools mathematically neutralize themselves the moment they become widespread.
You're Building with AI Coding Agents. Your Codebase Is Drifting. Here's Why — and the Fix.
We wrote 500 lines of rules. Claude read them — and still wrote text-[13px] instead of text-xs. The mistake wasn't Claude. The mistake was confusing documentation with enforcement.
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