What quant trading actually is. Because 90% of what gets called quant isn't

What quant trading actually is. Because 90% of what gets called quant isn't Quant trading is testable rules. Every decision, entry, exit, sizing, comes from a model you can write down and backtest. If the strategy is discretionary and changes based on how you feel that day, it's not quant. Adding an indicator to your chart doesn't make it quant. The work is not what people think. It's not staring at charts looking for setups. It's data cleaning, statistics, and testing ideas that mostly fail. Out of 100 ideas maybe 5 survive honest testing. The job is killing bad ideas fast, not falling in love with one. The tooling is simpler than you'd expect. Python, pandas, some statistics, price data. That stack builds and tests real strategies. What actually separates quants from retail isn't software, it's that quants demand evidence before they risk a dollar and retail risks the dollar first. The mindset shift that matters. Stop asking "will this trade win." Start asking "does this process have positive expectancy over 1,000 trades." One trade means nothing. The distribution is everything. That single reframe puts you ahead of nearly everyone in my opinion.