Market perspectives, fund updates, and insights on systematic investing from the team at Blackworks Capital.
Monday, 2 November 2026
Mega-cap technology led the market lower while small caps rose and credit tightened, a split the research reads as rotation rather than stress. Apple's results tonight, the midterms Tuesday and October payrolls Friday land on an options structure that would amplify any break of nearby support.
Articles and series on systematic investing.
Featured
Learn the truth about hedge funds, their strategies, and how they differ from mutual funds, focusing on risk management and a systematic approach to risk across market conditions.
Florence, Italy
Sharpe, Sortino, Calmar, alpha, capture ratios—what each metric reveals and how to read them together when evaluating hedge funds.
Glacier National Park, Montana
This blog post discusses why smaller systematic fund can often be more nimble and effective than a multi-billion-dollar giant.
Brooks Falls, Alaska
Discover the five forces that drive market prices and how Blackworks Capital's systematic framework translates them into disciplined investment decisions.
In July we measured the lowest sector correlation since 2000 and named the tells that separate a healthy rotation from a top. Here is what they say now.
Antarctic Peninsula
Part 11 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about our operating record: what our independent manager did with the slack we gave it in the sixth piece, how far we swung toward structure in response, and where we now draw the line between structure and judgment.
Brooks Falls, Alaska
Part 10 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the first two things our control taught us once it was running, and about the tension underneath both: our effort to make a reasoning layer measured and repeatable, and what that effort costs the reasoning.
Falls Creek Falls, Washington
Part 9 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the hardest question in the project: how do you know an AI investment process is actually working, when it cannot be backtested? Our answer runs every night, and it was built to be impossible to argue with.
Sol Duc Falls, Washington
Part 8 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the question the series has been walking toward from the start: which strategies are actually built to use what this technology does best, and which only look like they are.
Washington Coast, Washington
Part 7 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the most tempting idea we have examined since the build began: letting the AI learn from its own history.
Mount Rainier, Washington
Part 6 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the last step, where a read that has been doubted to death becomes an actual position, and where my own skepticism still is not finished.
Dry Tortugas National Park, Florida
Part 5 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the doubt we build into the system on purpose, and how far we let that doubt reach: from the read, to the methods behind the read, to the scorecard we grade everything against.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
Part 4 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the hardest problem in the project: making a fluent model's read trustworthy enough to inform a decision about real money.
Redwood National Park, California
Part 3 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is the hinge: the difference between reading the Five Forces with rules and reading them with a language model, and why that difference is the entire point of the exercise.
Glacier National Park, Montana
Part 2 of a series on building and testing an AI layer for our systematic framework. This one is about the data the model is allowed to think about, and the one rule we will not bend.
Antelope Canyon, Arizona
Treasury doubled its long-end buybacks to push the 30-year off a 19-year high. They ran this exact play in 2023. What the arithmetic and that scorecard actually say.
Outer Banks, North Carolina
Explore how Blackworks Capital is integrating AI into systematic investing, emphasizing a disciplined framework and the importance of context in market analysis.
The Dolomites, Italy
Systematic funds aren't opaque — they're among the most transparent strategies available. See how process, risk, and returns get decomposed.
Brooks Falls, Alaska
The S&P 500 is near record highs, yet sector correlation is the lowest since 2000. 27 years of data on whether rotations like this mark tops.
Diamond Beach, Iceland
Discover how Blackworks Capital leverages systematic investing to exploit predictable human errors through a disciplined, rules-based process.
Washington Coast, Washington
Discover how Blackworks Capital transforms investment ideas into automated trading systems through systematic research, backtesting, and continuous monitoring. Learn about our rigorous, disciplined approach.
Distillery Barrels, North Carolina
Human intuition, even backed by genuine expertise, breaks down under pressure. Our brains weren’t built for capital markets.
Colchuk Lake, Washington
Trading models can ace backtests and fail live. Learn how overfitting happens, how to spot it, and the defenses that protect real capital.
Venice, Italy
Discover how systematic hedge funds like Blackworks Capital achieve true diversification by combining multiple uncorrelated strategies.
Dubrovnik, Croatia
