The Event Horizon #3

(our third recurring update)

🚀 Quick Pulse — welcome back!

Welcome to the latest edition of the Event Horizon, your window into what we’re up to over at Doomsun.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been exercising our platform via our new backtesting engine. This engine runs trading simulations from signal generation through strategy execution, portfolio construction, and execution. The basics are in place, and we’re now refining the models at each layer to more accurately account for transaction costs, margin, and liquidity constraints.

(If you’re new, see the “What & Why” primer below.)

🌎 New Here?

What & Why

Doomsun is a fintech operating in the algorithmic trading space, with a thematic focus on energy transition, a rapidly growing sector fueled by the global shift from fossil fuels to low-carbon solutions and all the market chaos that entails. We’re building NOVA, our platform for understanding the market structure of this turbulent sector and trading on our insights. NOVA enables systematic development, testing, and deployment of trading strategies by combining advanced signal processing and machine learning techniques using a highly configurable architecture. The result is actionable insights that capture volatility while revealing how these evolving markets behave under the hood. Our phased roadmap funds itself and widens the moat: build NOVA ➜ trade with proprietary capital ➜ launch a $200M LP fund in early 2027 ➜ productize our data and SaaS insights.

Core Team

• Joe Smith (CEO): 20+ years leading teams in finance/fintech (Crescent Financial, Nubank, Cognitect), architecting and building distributed systems.

• Daemian Mack (CTO): 20+ years in software development, including building finance systems for Fortune 50s and neo-banks; now leads NOVA’s development.

• Harry McDonald: Nebraska Wesleyan graduate focusing on fundraising, strategy development, and investor relations.

(Need the full backstory? Click Here for our June 2 Newsletter!)

🔬 Inside NOVA Labs

Why backtest?

In addition to robust data pipelines and sophisticated modeling (e.g., machine learning, statistical techniques), generating reliable alpha signals requires rigorous backtesting to avoid biases like overfitting or look-ahead bias. The quality of signals depends on:

• Data Inputs: High-quality, cleaned, and timely data (e.g., price, volume, alternative data).

• Model Design: Feature engineering, model selection, and hyperparameter tuning.

• Validation: Ensuring signals are statistically significant and generalizable across market conditions.

Think of backtesting as a flight simulator for trading: we replay a large variety of historical market data, allowing NOVA’s alpha and risk models, along with strategies and the portfolio engine, to be assessed under real market conditions. That exposes hidden bugs, shows us how a strategy behaves during both quiet periods and chaos, and lets us tweak parameters before real capital is at risk. Traditional back-tests primarily measure how a strategy performed, measured by returns, risk, or hedging effect over specified time windows. NOVA takes this a step further by integrating our backtesting engine into the end-to-end platform, thereby more closely simulating the entire platform’s behavior under live trading conditions.

What We’ve Accomplished:

• Backtesting engine testing: Basic multi-asset backtests are run from start to finish.

• Volatility-clustering alpha model: Our first non-trivial alpha model is working.

• Theory meets reality: Early encouraging data from our volatility clustering model will be available soon as we integrate it with its strategy and backtest it!

What’s Next:

• Trade-friction: Integrate realistic transaction costs, liquidity limits, and margin so the engine better emulates real fills.

• Backtesting dashboard: Visualize results, including P&L, Sharpe, drawdown, and allocations.

🏆 Recent Milestones

• Back-testing engine: End-to-end simulations now run on demand, exercising the NOVA platform.

• Advanced strategy moves off the drawing board: Vol cluster Max-EV strategy implementation underway.

🔨 Current Focus

• Pre-seed investor outreach: Actively engaging with investors for the pre-seed round.

• Strategy development: Continued development on our volatility clustering tranche of strategies.

• Data-room expansion: Continued due diligence on updated financials, tech docs, and R&D notes for investors.

☕️ Join Us — 1 Million Cups Omaha, July 23rd

We’ll demo NOVA, share early results, and answer questions! Networking will begin at 8 am, and the presentation will start at 9 am.

📍 The Ashton Building - 1218 Nicholas St, Omaha, NE 68102

Hope to see you there!

🙏 How You Can Help

• Introduce us to investors or senior quant engineers.

• Forward this newsletter to anyone interested in fintech, trade-tech, or the energy transition.

• Send a note. Questions, thoughts, or encouragement are always welcome.

Reach us anytime at [email protected]. Thanks for tuning into the Event Horizon! See you next time!

Best,
The Doomsun Team