A fully rules-based system means all of the buy and sell decisions are pre-determined and based on extensive historical market testing. There’s no gut feel or subjective analysis – the system contains all of the rules to make the best decisions possible.

There are many benefits of fully rules-based trading:

• Decisions are based on real research and extensive testing of historical markets
• 100% discipline, the system always executes flawlessly
• No emotional biases
• The system is easily measurable and can be enhanced over time

What makes Merlin extra special is that it was built by a trader first.

Evan’s market observations and live trading for over a decade are at the core of Merlin’s decision making process. That means Merlin is not just applying random and impossible to explain mathematical theory, instead, it’s a simple system based on how markets really work.

No, absolutely not.

We’re doing all of the heavy lifting and number crunching for you. Internally, we have the Merlin algorithm running in real-time measuring and monitoring markets and systematically producing signals.

As a subscriber, all you need to do is log in to your Trade Risk dashboard each night to see what the trading system has generated for signals. You can follow along at your own pace and place orders with any broker of your choosing.

Merlin is a long-only algorithm that buys retracements in momentum stocks during healthy market environments. It trades individual stocks, equity ETFs, and all signals are generated using daily closing prices. You can place all of your Merlin orders after the market closes and be fully prepared for the next session — no intraday screen watching is required. 

See Performance Disclosures: Portfolio Statistics.

You can see Merlin is more profitable on a per trade basis than our Lamorak system, however, it trades slower and makes fewer trades per year on average.

The strategy has been backtested and validated across thousands of stocks and ETFs with careful considerations not to data mine or overfit. Merlin has been running live since 2019.

Yes, absolutely!

We built two model portfolios that you can follow once you become a Merlin subscriber, one is called Merlin Margin and the other is called Merlin IRA. Both portfolios take the same exact signals and trade identically to one another, they simply use different position sizing algorithms for each signal.

With the Merlin IRA portfolio, you should expect to get lower overall returns but you'll also enjoy smaller drawdowns and less volatility.

Merlin is a professional trading strategy that focuses on producing strong risk-adjusted returns. It’s designed to scale and handle large account sizes. 

Account minimums are a personal decision and will vary greatly from trader to trader depending on your circumstances, goals, and risk tolerance. As a general guideline, Trade Risk has found account sizes that are $50,000 or more will get the most out of a Merlin trading membership.

We offer a fourteen day $1 trial to our trading system so you can take them for a test drive to make sure they live up to your expectations. There are no auto-enrollments or strings attached. The trial will end automatically after fourteen days.

We recommend all new users start with the $1 trial. 

Once you subscribe to any of our memberships, all sales are final. To view our full refund and cancellation policy, click here.