The Black Swan Study Club offers membership on your terms. Join for a month, or stay for a while – you decide when our work adds value to your strategy.

$50/month. Sign-up and cancellation is 100% self-serve, perfect for active investors who value independence and strategic insights when they need it.

If you're not quite ready to step forward, visit our subreddit r/activeinvestormag for curated market insights from your host, Teresa Lo.

We Called It Again, Again ...

The way we see this is simple. There is no need to forecast that far in advance. All we really need is to be a week or two ahead of the big events. Members of the Black Swan Study Club received plenty of warning about the big picture, and were also provided with a simple method to protect themselves.

"Why Did Nobody Notice?"

The year 2008 was an annus horribilis for investors. The Great Financial Crisis just would not quit, and during a visit to the London School of Economics that November, HM Queen Elizabeth II stumped the world's elite by asking, "If these things were so large, how come everyone missed them?"

Eight months later, the British Academy answered (PDF):

Many people did foresee the crisis. However, the exact form that it would take and the timing of its onset and ferocity were foreseen by nobody. What matters in such circumstances is not just to predict the nature of the problem but also its timing. And there is also finding the will to act and being sure that authorities have as part of their powers the right instruments to bring to bear on the problem.

The answer is simpler than most realize: Financial disasters aren't unpredictable 'black swans' – they're the inevitable consequences of overreliance on mathematical models that fundamentally cannot capture investor sentiment and 'animal spirits.' These models create an illusion of control while their inherent limitations can amplify or even generate the very crises their practitioners seek to prevent.

Welcome to the Black Swan Study Club

Markets are full of noise, hype, and B.S. Most investors follow the herd, reacting to the same recycled narratives, taking on real risks but often missing out on real opportunities.

This club has studied all the B.S., and that is our edge. We cut through the noise, challenge assumptions, and focus on the real forces shaping markets, from macro trends to quantitative signals, market anomalies, subtle sentiment shifts, and yes, events leading up to the "black swan."

Why Join?

• Advanced Market Insights – Reality-based, data-driven analysis keeps us ahead of the curve. No FOMO. No YOLO.
• Community of Independent Thinkers – Engage with serious, self-directed investors who aren’t afraid to challenge conventional wisdom.
• Alpha Generation Strategies – Get actionable insights on stock selection, asset allocation, and risk management that go beyond mainstream financial wisdom.

What You Get

• Stock Ideas & Portfolio Strategies – Quantitative and discretionary insights on positioning for risk-adjusted returns.
• Access to an Intelligent Community – Serious investors, traders, and strategists who bring real insights to the table.
• Exclusive Market Research & Strategy Reports – Proprietary deep dives into market anomalies, investor sentiment, and positioning.
• Live Discussions & Q&A Sessions – Real-time analysis of emerging market risks and opportunities. We use Voxer, available for iOS, Android and broswer.

Who This is For

• Active investors and traders managing their own portfolios and take calculated risk.
• Professionals who think beyond the headlines and want both qualitative and quantitative-driven insights.
• Skeptics of mainstream narratives who know that market commentary is often full of noise and B.S.

Join the Black Swan Study Club

See markets differently. Gain access to exclusive insight and a community that actually thinks critically about markets rather than blindly following the herd.

Sign Me Up

Your host, Teresa Lo

The key to solving investment challenges lies in the approach. We believe in the power of first-principles thinking. With our own money on the line, we focus on a small set of problems that matter and solve them.

Teresa has dedicated her career to buy-side macroeconomic, technical, and quantitative strategies—not theories or sales pitches. She’s traded through market booms and crashes, and when it mattered, her strategies delivered results.

By quantifying insights about volatility and investor sentiment gained from a long trading career, we developed strategies and solutions grounded in behavioral and quantitative finance, including a different approach to asset class selection and asset allocation that adapts to the market's ever-changing nature.

To learn more, read A Conversation with Teresa Lo, where she sat down with fellow investor and author Leslie N. Masonson. The interview is featured in the December 2023 issue of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine.

How Traditional Strategies Left Investors Stranded

Most investors rely on financial advisors using outdated models and rigid strategies. Traditional portfolio construction, based on Harry Markowitz’s Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), assumes that stocks and bonds move in opposite directions—so combining them should stabilize risk.

That assumption failed in 2022 when rising inflation and interest rates caused both stocks and bonds to plummet simultaneously. Investors who followed conventional asset allocation models suffered unprecedented losses, while outdated risk assessments failed to prepare them for real-world volatility.

Why Your Portfolio Isn’t Working for You

Most investment firms prioritize sales over performance. Their strategies rely on software that can’t adapt to modern markets and sell-side research designed to serve the firm’s interests—not yours.

Risk assessments, like KYC questionnaires, are more about legal protection than actual risk management. Research confirms these assessments often misrepresent clients' actual risk tolerance, leading to misaligned portfolios that fail under stress (Grable et al., 2020; Linciano & Soccorso, 2012).

While Markets Gyrated, Our Adaptive Strategy Protected Investors

We never relied on MPT. Our strategies evolved from real trading experience, focusing on volatility-based risk management instead of rigid asset allocations.

Nobel laureate Robert Merton—who famously miscalculated risk at LTCM—later realized that portfolios should target stable volatility, not fixed allocations. We applied that lesson early, pivoting away from bonds in 2019 and completely exiting by 2021, shielding our capital while others suffered.

Recognizing the macroeconomic shifts early, we began to pivot away from bonds in 2019 based on our own insights. By the end of 2021, our Endgame models contained no bonds, shielding us from the unprecedented losses that plagued traditional portfolios. Our macroeconomic analysis, commitment to adaptive strategies and real-time risk assessment protected our investments and unlocked opportunities — delivering results when traditional strategies collapsed.

AiM for TradeStation

For members looking to enhance their charts with analytics, we offer an exclusive suite of TradeStation indicator and paintbar studies for an additional fee.

Precision Trading Without the Guesswork

Gain a decisive edge with our suite of custom TradeStation studies, designed to cut through market noise and provide objective, systematic trading signals.

No man is better than a machine, and no machine is better than a man with a machine. – Paul Tudor Jones

The AiM for TradeStation suite of tools help active investors visualize trends, pinpoint entry and exit points, and optimize position sizing—all without discretionary guesswork.

• SmarterStops & SwingStops – Trail stops intelligently and identify high-probability entry points within trends.
• TradeSize Indicator – Dynamically adjust position sizes based on market volatility for disciplined risk management.
• Reward-to-Risk Ratio (RRR) – Quantify risk vs. reward before entering a trade, ensuring the odds are in your favor.
• Four-Stage Trend Analysis (HRP) – Identify market sentiment shifts using insights from Justin Mamis and Stan Weinstein.

Compatible with both charts and RadarScreen, these studies provide data-driven signals to help you navigate the market with confidence.

Come See What You’ve Been Missing

Markets are chaotic, but within that chaos lies opportunity—if you know where to look. The Black Swan Study Club isn’t just another trading group; it’s a high-level mastermind for successful independent investors.

If you're ready to see the unseen, navigate uncertainty, and seize opportunity from chaos, join us today. The edge you need is here—will you take it?