Universe books
An experimental, paper-only part of the portfolio layer — one pre-registered trend rule held across 15 coins at once. How to turn it on, the two books, the forward paper book versus the sealed research report, Tick now and Reset.
The Universe page (/universe) runs universe books: one fixed rule held across 15 coins at once and rebalanced at each daily close. A pipeline strategy trades one market. A universe book asks a different question: does one simple rule make money across a whole basket of coins? The books are paper only and never place an order.
Experimental
Universe books are part of the experimental portfolio layer, which is off by default. They trade simulated books on your machine. A forward record takes months to mean anything, and nothing here is a prediction or financial advice.
Turn it on
Switch on the portfolio layer
In Settings → System → Experimental features, turn on Portfolio layer and click Save all. Universe appears in the sidebar and a Portfolio area appears in Settings. While the layer is off the page says The portfolio layer is off. Turn it on under Settings → System → Experimental features. The layer's background jobs are added on the next restart or scheduler reconcile.
Switch on the forward books
In Settings → Portfolio → Universe books, turn on Universe paper books and save. Each book starts on the first tick after this, takes its first positions at the next daily close, and is never backfilled.
Make sure the data is there
The books build daily closes from the stored 1-hour candles of their 15 coins. The Starter preset only covers BTC, ETH and SOL, so download the rest with Get data, or bring the research universe up to plan, and check the Catalog. Without the candles, a tick reports no recent closes in the lake.
The rule
Both books use the same rule, fixed in a written spec before it was ever run:
- Each coin gets its own trend-following position from its daily closes, the same trend signal the gauntlet's baseline hurdle measures strategies against.
- Every coin with data gets an equal share of the risk. The whole book is then scaled to target 20% volatility a year, measured over the trailing 60 days, with gross exposure capped at 2×.
- Each trade pays 4.5 bps in fees and 2 bps in slippage, and funding is charged.
- Positions are decided at each daily close (UTC) and held through the next day.
The two books differ only in direction:
| Book | Each coin can be |
|---|---|
| Trend blend · long/flat | long or flat |
| Trend blend · long/short | long or short |
The 15 coins are BTC, ETH, XRP, LINK, XLM, ADA, ZEC, BNB, DOGE, SOL, UNI, AVAX, NEAR, AAVE and BCH.
Nothing in the rule may be tuned against its results. A change needs a new spec and a new book name, so an existing book's forward record is never re-fitted.
The page
The header reads Universe books with Forward books on (or off) and Tick now. Pick a book with the buttons below it. Each book has two sections.
Forward paper book
The clean test: it starts when switched on, takes positions at the next daily close and is never backfilled.
Once started it shows Started, Days booked, Return, Max drawdown and Gross exposure, the last close booked, a Growth of $10,000 chart, and the current positions with each coin's Weight and PnL since start. With no positions it says Flat — no positions held.
Before it starts it says either Not started yet — it starts on the next hourly tick. or, if the forward books are off, where to turn them on.
Reset asks you to confirm: Its forward record is discarded and it restarts on the next tick. Only reset when you mean to throw the record away; the whole point of a forward book is the unbroken record.
Research (sealed history)
A backtest of the same rule from 2021-01-01 to the research cutoff. It is sealed: it never sees the most recent period that Forven holds back from all research. Recompute runs it again.
- Headline: Return, CAGR, Sharpe, Max drawdown, Realised vol and Avg gross exposure, with a Growth of $10,000 chart.
- Evidence checks: the share of coins with a positive contribution, the worst Sharpe with one coin left out, the Sharpe at 2× costs, a placebo test with the timing shuffled (median and 95th-percentile Sharpe, and the share of placebos the rule beats), alpha against equal-weight buy-and-hold with its t-stat and beta, and the cost and funding drag per year.
- By year and Contribution by coin.
An After the cutoff panel may show how the rule did after the research cutoff. It is labelled honestly: an earlier review already saw that period, so it isn't a clean test. The forward paper book is.
Tick now
The books tick hourly in the background, booking any daily closes that have arrived. Tick now runs a tick at once and reports per book: started, how many days it booked, or why it didn't (up to date, waiting for closes after …, no recent closes in the lake). It is disabled while the forward books are off.
In Manual mode all scheduled jobs are paused, including the hourly tick, so the books only move when you click Tick now. See autonomy modes.
Caveats
- Experimental. The portfolio layer is off by default and may change.
- Paper only. No order is ever placed, on any network.
- The research is still history. Leave-one-out, cost and placebo checks make an overfit rule harder to miss, but a good sealed backtest is not evidence the rule will keep working. The forward book is the test, and it needs time.
- Reset is final. The discarded forward record can't be recovered.
Related
- Settings: the Portfolio area and the experimental features switch
- Managing market data: getting the candles the books read
- The gauntlet: how single strategies are tested, including the baseline hurdle
- Paper trading: paper books for pipeline strategies
Risk & safety
Read the Risk Command page — halt banners, circuit breakers, the gauges, Trading Status and Risk Limits, the Live Portfolio Budget, the Liquidity Guard, the Regime Gate, the Live/Paper scope toggle and Emergency Halt — and know when to step in.
Bot Factory
Create and operate autonomous LLM trading bots — each a persona plus risk config that reasons over live candles and trades a paper ledger by default, with an explicitly armed, fully gated live mode.