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This interview features Chris Tate—veteran Australian trader, author, and co-founder of Trading Game—speaking candidly about how he actually approaches markets. From Melbourne, he lays out why resilience, courage, and a clear internal locus of control matter more than hot indicators, and how his journey from academia to the floor to fully electronic trading shaped a keep-it-simple edge that lasts.
You’ll learn Chris Tate’s core playbook: buy existing trends, take clean breakouts, manage risk with rules, and keep your system simple enough to fit in a few lines of code. He explains why most traders lose to their own impulses, how journaling and routines build discipline, and the practical split between short-term cash-flow systems and long-term wealth creation in equities. If you’ve been drowning in noise, this piece shows how to subtract, stay systematic, and let the market do the heavy lifting.
Chris Tate Playbook & Strategy: How He Actually Trades
Philosophy of Edge: keep it simple, obey the rules
Chris Tate builds around price, trends, and discipline—not predictions. The goal is to capture the meat of established moves with rules so clear they’re boring, because boring is repeatable.
- Trade only liquid markets you can execute cleanly; ignore everything else.
- Let price lead. If it’s not trending, stand aside.
- System > feelings. If the rule triggers, take it—no second-guessing.
- One mandate: cut losses fast, let winners run.
Market universe & data routine
He separates “what to trade” from “how to trade.” A small, consistent universe plus a fixed review schedule keeps decision fatigue low and execution high.
- Build a watchlist of 50–200 liquid equities/ETFs and a few clean futures/FX majors.
- Use weekly data for core equity trends; use daily only if your plan requires it.
- Run scans the same time every week (e.g., Sunday): new 20/55-week highs, rising moving averages, expanding ranges.
- If nothing qualifies, do nothing. Cash is a position.
Entries: breakout first, everything else second
Entries are designed to join strength, not guess turns. Breakouts align you with momentum and remove the need to “be clever.”
- Longs: buy a close above the 20-week high; conservative option: 55-week high.
- Confirmation (optional): price above a rising 30-week MA; reject if MA is flat/falling.
- Avoid clutter: no more than one secondary filter (e.g., volume > 50-day average).
- Never chase intraday; act on end-of-day/weekly signals only, per your plan.
Initial risk: position sizing that survives cold streaks
The position size is set so that a single loss is just a scratch. That’s what keeps you in the game long enough to hit the big trends.
- Risk per trade: 0.5%–1.0% of equity for long-term systems; cap total portfolio heat at 6%–8%.
- Initial stop: below the most recent weekly swing low or 2×ATR(14-week), whichever is further.
- Position size = (Account × Risk%) ÷ (Entry − Stop).
- Reduce size around known gap events (earnings, thin markets) or skip entirely per your plan.
Trade management: trail, add, and exit without drama
Winners are managed mechanically, so you don’t donate equity back to the market. Trailing logic locks in progress while allowing trends to breathe.
- Trail stop to 3×ATR(14-week) behind price or below the 10-week low—pick one method and stick to it.
- Add-ons: pyramid at +1R and +2R with 50% and 33% the original size; maximum three tiers.
- Move stop to break-even after +1R only if it doesn’t crowd the trend; otherwise, let ATR/trend stop do the work.
- Exit if price closes below your trailing stop or violates the chosen weekly low—no exceptions.
Two-system structure: cash-flow vs. wealth-builder
Chris separates time horizons so signals never compete. One system prints consistency; the other hunts the monsters.
- Wealth system (equities): weekly breakout/trend-follow as above; low turnover, wide stops, big winners.
- Cash-flow system (index/FX/futures): tighter daily breakout/mean-reversion rules with 0.25%–0.5% risk/trade and hard daily loss limits.
- Never mix rulesets. Each system has its own universe, risk, and review cadence.
Portfolio construction: diversify by idea, not by ticker
He avoids crowded correlation traps by spreading bets across uncorrelated edges, instruments, and timeframes.
- Limit to 1 position per highly correlated group (e.g., only one big US tech at a time).
- Stagger entries over multiple weeks to reduce timing risk.
- Cap sector exposure at 2–3 open positions; cap currency or commodity theme similarly.
- If total open risk > 8%, stop adding until heat declines.
Execution checklist: turn signals into fills
Great rules die in sloppy execution. A brief pre-trade ritual removes wiggle room and speeds decisions.
- Before the session: confirm signals, levels, size, and orders in writing.
- Place stop-loss and initial target/management orders immediately after entry.
- Use Good-’Til-Cancelled stop orders for weekly systems; update them on the review day only.
- Log fills, slippage, and any deviation from plan (should be zero).
Review loop: journals, metrics, and upgrades
Progress is engineered, not hoped for. His reviews are simple, scheduled, and focused on rules, not narratives.
- Weekly: record R-multiple for each trade; tag setup, market, and any plan deviations.
- Monthly: check system health—expectancy, win rate, average R, time-in-trade, max heat.
- Quarterly: remove rules you don’t use; refine those that drive expectancy; keep the playbook short.
- If a change isn’t testable and writeable on one page, don’t deploy it.
Trader psychology: make discipline automatic
The edge is 50% rules and 50% the ability to follow them. Chris normalizes boredom and treats feelings as background noise.
- Pre-commit: if the signal prints, you take it—no discretionary veto unless a hard rule says “skip.”
- Use “if-then” scripts for common stressors (e.g., “If price gaps through my stop, then execute market exit on open and log gap size.”).
- Define a daily stop for attention and risk (e.g., max 3 trades or −1.5R for the cash-flow system).
- Celebrate rule-following, not P&; profits are a lagging indicator of discipline.
Size Risk First: Small Fixed R Keeps You Trading Long-Term
Chris Tate hammers this from the jump: survival beats brilliance. Before you chase entries, decide your fixed R per trade so a routine loss is just a paper cut. Most traders go bust not because their ideas are bad, but because their sizing is reckless. A small fixed R—think 0.5% to 1.0% of equity—keeps losing streaks manageable and your head clear.
With fixed R, decisions get simple and quick. You calculate the size from the distance to your stop, place the order, and move on. No “feels,” no doubling down, no revenge trades—just math. That structure frees you to capture the next trend without emotional baggage, exactly how Chris Tate runs his playbook.
Trade What’s Moving: Simple Breakout Rules Over Fancy Predictions
Chris Tate keeps it blunt: price action tells the truth, predictions tell stories. He waits for clean breakouts from well-defined highs instead of guessing tops and bottoms. That way, he joins the momentum already in motion rather than hoping it appears later. The result is fewer opinions, more signals he can actually execute.
He also standardizes the trigger so there’s no wiggle room—close above a prior range, rising trend filter, then go. If the setup isn’t there, Chris Tate doesn’t negotiate with the chart; he moves on. This trims noise, cuts hesitation, and keeps him aligned with the strongest names. Trade what’s moving, ride the wave, and let the rules—not forecasts—do the heavy lifting.
Diversify By Underlying, Strategy, And Duration To Smooth the Equity Curve
Chris Tate spreads risk across different engines so no single theme can wreck the month. He mixes equities, indices, and FX, plus both trend and shorter-term cash-flow systems, so returns don’t hinge on one market mood. By staggering holding periods—some trades lasting days, others running for months—he avoids stacking the same timing risk everywhere. The aim is steadier compounding, not swinging for fences on a single bet.
He also caps correlated exposure, so winners in one pocket can offset chop elsewhere. When trends stall in equities, Chris Tate wants a daily system or a different asset class ready to carry the load. This approach keeps portfolio “heat” controlled while still giving big moves room to pay. Diversify the idea, the instrument, and the timeframe, and the equity curve tends to behave like a business, not a rollercoaster.
Volatility Sets Position Size: ATR Stops, Wider Trends, Fewer Whipsaws
Chris Tate sizes every position to volatility so the stop fits the market’s mood. When ATR is high, he cuts size and widens stops; when ATR is calm, he allows a bit more size with tighter levels. This keeps each trade’s dollar risk constant while respecting the instrument’s behavior. It’s how he avoids getting flicked out by normal noise and saves the big exits for real regime changes.
He anchors initial stops at a multiple of ATR and trails using the same logic, so management stays consistent from entry to exit. No guessing, no “feel”—just a rule that adapts automatically as conditions change. Because size shrinks in stormy periods, blowups are rare and recovery is faster. Volatility does the talking; Chris Tate just follows the math.
Process Over Ego: Predefined Entries, Hard Exits, Relentless Review Discipline
Chris Tate treats the plan like a contract: if the entry prints, he takes it without debate. He preloads stops and management orders so execution is mechanical, not emotional. Hard exits are non-negotiable; once the stop is hit, the trade is over and logged. This strips out the heroic “I’ll fix it” impulse that wrecks risk.
He then audits results on a schedule—R-multiples, drawdown depth, and any rule breaks go straight into the journal. If a tweak can’t be written on one page and tested, it doesn’t make the cut, which keeps the strategy tight and repeatable. Chris Tate rewards himself for following rules, not for lucky P&L spikes. Process first, ego last—that’s how the edge survives bad weeks and compounds over years.
Chris Tate’s bottom line is brutally consistent: edge lives in simple rules, sized small, executed without drama. He strips trading down to what actually pays—join strength on breakouts, cut losers fast, and let volatility set distance and size so normal noise doesn’t knock you out. Fixed R risk means cold streaks are survivable; ATR-based stops mean trends get enough oxygen to run. That combination turns “being right” into “getting paid,” because the math—not the mood—drives outcomes.
Just as important, he treats the portfolio like a business. Diversify by underlying, strategy, and duration so one theme can’t torch the whole month. Keep a wealth-builder system for weekly trends and a separate cash-flow system for shorter timeframes, with hard limits on total heat. Then enforce the plan with checklists, preloaded orders, and a review loop that rewards rule-following over lucky P&L. In Chris Tate’s world, boring is a feature: you do the same sensible things, over and over, and let the market write the checks.
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