Kieran Duff runs XAQP, a systematic portfolio of around 14 strategies on Darwinex Zero. On Behind the DARWIN he tells Blayn how a single headline in April exposed hidden correlation across his strategies. He spent the next months building "the governor", a risk layer that decides which trades reach the market, and raised his capacity with order splitting.
Key takeaways
Watch the full interview:
Kieran has been in the markets for around eight years. His dad introduced him to Bitcoin in 2017. He went on to trade FX discretionarily, mostly key levels and retests, with results he describes as up and down.
Crypto taught him the hardest lesson. He made a lot of money during 2020 and 2021, then lost nearly all of it through failed projects and collapses he was exposed to. He had to rebuild from scratch, which is why he respects risk the way he does now.
"Blayn is the reason that I switched from a discretionary approach to a systematic approach about two years ago now. Best decision I ever made." 1:21
Diversification on paper was not enough. XAQP traded different assets, timeframes and styles, but each strategy ran on its own.
At the time he had seven strategies trading USDJPY and four or five trading gold. One headline moved both markets and nearly every one of them fired long, got stopped out, then fired short and got stopped again. Price finished the day almost flat.
"And what it's missing is a brain." 23:52
He now asks one question before every decision: how would he feel if this were the first thing he saw on his phone in the morning?
It is a management layer that treats strategies like traders on a professional desk. Each strategy sends its signal to the governor, which lets the trade through or blocks it.
"I call mine the governor because it sits as kind of a governance layer above my strategies." 25:43
It checks whether the book already holds similar exposure. Long USDJPY and short GBPUSD are close to the same dollar bet, so the second trade may not go through. It also applies what he calls one in the chamber: one losing trade a day, then the book closes until tomorrow. A separate file handles order splitting. He built most of it with Claude, adding pieces week by week.
"So I kind of think the majority of my alpha sits within the governor as opposed to in the strategies." 29:03
New strategies run raw on his incubator DARWIN, LVFZ, before they move into XAQP.
He separates depth from duration. The depth was modest. The months of waiting were the hard part, after a first year where most days made money.
"It was the duration that was the hardest thing." 46:32
He does not cut portfolio risk in a drawdown. If behaviour is within what testing and live history predict, he lets the portfolio do what it was built to do. Individual strategies have a drawdown slider that scales size down if one starts to fall away.
To stay detached from P&L he built a private dashboard. It compares the account's live drawdown depth and duration with his backtests and live history, and labels the result normal or worth investigating.
"As long as that is green, then I don't care." 52:48
Capacity is how much capital a strategy can handle before slippage and poor fills eat into returns. Darwinex measures it by comparing the trader's fill with the investor's fill.
By March he was using close to half of his available capacity. He made two changes. He removed strategies that traded thin markets at thin times, including a Sunday-open system on the S&P 500. Then he split every order into three, with a three-second delay between each, which gives the order book time to refill without missing a fast move. As stated on stream, his estimated capacity rose from around 3.5 million to around 75 million.
He is now close to finishing a futures version of XAQP for larger allocators.
Test ideas yourself.
"If I'd stopped testing an idea every time somebody told me it wouldn't work, I wouldn't be where I am now." 1:22:38
Asked how he knew his results were skill and not luck, his answer was time. Recovering from a long drawdown tipped the balance, but he keeps monitoring edge decay, capacity and live fills against backtests so he can act if anything changes.
The full session includes Kieran sharing his capacity charts and his drawdown dashboard on screen. Watch Behind the DARWIN with Kieran on YouTube, and join the Darwinex Zero Discord to ask him about the governor.
Building your own track record? Start on Darwinex Zero.
What is portfolio-level risk management in algorithmic trading?
It is a layer above individual strategies that sees the whole book. It blocks trades that duplicate existing exposure, caps daily losses and controls order execution. Kieran's view is that most of a retail systematic trader's edge can sit in this layer.
How do you know if a drawdown is normal?
Compare its depth and its duration with your backtests and live history. If both sit within the range those predict, the strategy is behaving as designed. Kieran tracks this on a dashboard and only investigates when the drawdown falls outside it.
What is trading strategy capacity?
Capacity is the amount of capital a strategy can manage before slippage and poor fills reduce returns. Strategies in illiquid markets or at illiquid times hit their limit sooner. Splitting large orders into smaller ones spaced a few seconds apart can raise it.
Is Darwinex Zero a prop firm?
No. Darwinex Zero lets traders build a verified track record that can attract investor capital through Darwinex, an FCA-regulated asset manager. There is no challenge to pass.
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Darwinex Zero.
*Darwinex Zero and the domain www.darwinexzero.com are trade names used by Tradeslide Technologies, a company registered in the United Kingdom under number 14398381.
The contents of this blog post and video are for educational purposes only and should not be construed as financial and/or investment advice