STOIC AI STRATEGY
Meta — market-neutral crypto strategy
Meta holds long and short positions at the same time, sized to offset each other, so returns come from how individual assets perform relative to one another rather than from the direction of the crypto market.
- Annualised return
- 39.79%Since Jan 2021 · includes backtest
- Annualised, live only
- 25.9%Since 1 Apr 2023
- Max Drawdown
- 12%Measured on the daily equity curve
- Sharpe Ratio
- 2.14USDT denomination
Live since 1 April 2023; figures before that date are backtested. Past performance does not guarantee future results.
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We have your address, . A member of the team will follow up with the Meta materials and answer questions about allocating to the strategy.
Direction-independent
Long and short exposure are balanced dollar-for-dollar, so net exposure stays below 1–2% of NAV and the return does not depend on which way the market moves.
No losing 12-month period
Across every rolling year since January 2021, the weakest returned +10.9%.
200+ sub-strategies
Momentum, reversal, arbitrage and hedging clusters, with around 20 carrying weight at any one time.
Non-custodial
Your capital stays in your own exchange account. Stoic connects through API keys that carry no withdrawal rights and never takes custody of client assets.
Investment process
How Meta's market-neutral strategy works
Meta is built as a portfolio of independent quantitative ideas rather than a single model. Each part below is a stage of the same pipeline, from how an idea is found to how it is executed.
Monthly returns and track record
Parameters — Meta USDT
- USDT Base Currency
- 2.14 Sharpe Ratio
- 2.87 Calmar Ratio
- 2.87% Avg Monthly Gains
- 12.01% Max Drawdown
- 54.84% Profitable days %
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | YTD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 8.31% | 23.78% | 7.22% | 12.67% | -3.22% | 4.09% | 1.01% | 6.5% | 3.24% | 5.97% | 5.93% | -0.02% | 103.36% |
| 2022 | 3.15% | 1.88% | 7.86% | 4.87% | 9.34% | 1.5% | 1.55% | 2.16% | 3.97% | 1.68% | -0.09% | 3.97% | 50.29% |
| 2023 | -0.22% | 2.33% | -3.57% | -0.88% | 1.60% | 6.74% | -5.58% | 1.27% | 3.77% | 1.93% | 1.69% | 10.22% | 19.98% |
| 2024 | -1.88% | 2.21% | 9.36% | 3.03% | -0.68% | 2.68% | -3.78% | 0.99% | -2.64% | -2.39% | 11.45% | 8.61% | 28.81% |
| 2025 | 1.44% | 7.09% | -3.98% | 0.20% | 1.10% | 4.23% | 2.30% | -1.90% | 3.12% | -0.48% | 4.81% | 5.88% | 25.88% |
| 2026 | -1.19% | -1.25% | -1.78% | 6.09% | 6.68% | -2.73% | 3.33% | 9.01% |
Parameters — Meta BTC
- BTC Base Currency
- 1.84 Sharpe Ratio
- 1.74 Calmar Ratio
- 2.07% Avg Monthly Gains
- 14.25% Max Drawdown
- 53.36% Profitable days %
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | YTD | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 5.27% | 16.33% | 3.76% | 7.30% | -3.57% | 3.77% | 0.52% | 5.24% | 2.15% | 4.16% | 4.32% | -0.41% | 59.55% |
| 2022 | 2.96% | 1.90% | 7.35% | 4.38% | 9.33% | 1.42% | 1.33% | 1.54% | 3.54% | 1.21% | -0.57% | 3.64% | 44.81% |
| 2023 | -0.63% | 1.74% | -3.32% | -1.44% | 1.03% | 6.76% | -6.03% | 0.92% | 3.48% | 1.36% | 0.75% | 7.85% | 12.30% |
| 2024 | -2.99% | 0.51% | 5.12% | 2.46% | -1.17% | 1.96% | -4.17% | 0.80% | -3.09% | -3.06% | 9.71% | 7.14% | 12.88% |
| 2025 | 0.63% | 6.78% | -4.36% | -0.07% | 0.75% | 3.87% | 1.52% | -2.45% | 2.45% | -0.65% | 4.81% | 5.72% | 20.03% |
| 2026 | -1.64% | -1.19% | -1.69% | 6.28% | 6.43% | -2.93% | 2.75% | 7.80% |
Market regimes
How Meta behaves when the market moves
A market-neutral strategy is judged on what it does when direction stops helping. Each window below covers live trading only, and pairs the market's total return over those dates with Meta's.
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Market rose
2024
- Bitcoin
- +121.31%
- Meta
- +28.8%
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Market fell
2025
- Bitcoin
- -6.33%
- Meta
- +25.9%
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Market fell sharply
2026 year to date
- Bitcoin
- -28.25%
- Meta
- +9.0%
All windows are live trading; Meta has been live since 1 April 2023. The Bitcoin figures are market data shown for context, not strategy results, and are taken from the Stoic AI Crypto Index fact sheet (August 2026). Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Strategy terms and parameters
- 1 Strategy type Market-neutral, long and short
- 2 Live since 1 April 2023
- 3 Denominations USDT, BTC
- 4 Universe Futures available on Binance Global, within the top 15% most liquid digital assets, excluding memecoins and GameFi tokens
- 5 Sub-strategies 200+ across momentum, reversal, arbitrage and hedging clusters; around 20 carry a non-zero weight at any time
- 6 Rebalancing Hourly
- 7 Average holding period 3–5 days; up to 3–4 weeks for high-conviction trend positions
- 8 Position limits 3% per asset, 20% for Bitcoin, 40% per cluster; 40% exchange-level stop per asset
- 9 Minimum to start $500 on Bybit; $1,000 on Binance and Hyperliquid
- 10 Leverage None by default; up to 5x on request
- 11 Custody Funds stay in your own exchange account, connected via API keys without withdrawal rights Specifications reflect the Meta strategy as described in its monthly fact sheet. Limits are targets applied by the risk system, not guarantees.
Measured against institutional peers
"Crypto Insights Group's live database shows that Stoic Meta outperformed the average market-neutral crypto hedge fund in both BTC and USDT returns throughout 2025 and 2026. Those results are based on live performance — not backtests — which makes the comparison especially meaningful."
Source: Crypto Insights Group live crypto hedge fund database. Comparison includes live performance only (no backtests). Past performance does not guarantee future results.
Risk framework
How Meta manages risk
Risk is capped at several levels at once, so no single asset, cluster or model failure can dominate the outcome.
FAQ
Market-neutral trading questions, answered
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A market-neutral strategy holds long and short positions at the same time, sized so the two sides offset each other. Because roughly as much capital is positioned for prices to rise as for them to fall, the return comes from how individual assets perform relative to one another rather than from the direction of the crypto market as a whole. Meta is built this way: total long exposure is balanced against total short exposure on a dollar-neutral basis, and net exposure stays typically below 1–2%, drifting above that only briefly because of execution and rebalancing latency.
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Gross exposure is normally maintained around 100% of net asset value, within a range of roughly ±20% depending on market conditions and signal intensity. Capital is allocated across more than 200 active sub-strategies grouped into momentum, reversal, arbitrage and hedging clusters; at any given time around 20 of them carry a non-zero weight. The split between them follows a risk-based optimisation using historical volatility, covariance and expected Sharpe ratios, so no single idea can dominate the book.
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Risk is capped at several levels at once. No single asset may exceed 3% of the portfolio, and Bitcoin is capped at 20%. Each cluster of related sub-strategies is limited to 40% of allocation, and exchange-level stop orders cap the loss on any individual asset at 40%. Together these keep the maximum loss contribution of any one asset to approximately 1% of portfolio net asset value. A real-time system tracks drawdowns, volatility, leverage and exposures, raising automated alerts when a predefined limit is breached.
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The largest peak-to-trough decline since live trading began is 12%. Typical drawdowns are much smaller: the average drawdown measures 1.57% and lasts about 12.9 days. The strategy is routinely stress-tested against historical market shocks, including March 2020, May 2021, the FTX collapse in 2022 and the tariff-related macro stress of 2025.
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Rebalancing runs on an hourly basis. The average position is held for three to five days, while the longest, high-conviction trend positions can stay open for three to four weeks. Turnover averages approximately 55% of strategy capital per day, varying with market volatility and liquidity conditions.
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The strategy operates primarily across the top 15% most liquid digital assets, including Bitcoin and major altcoins. Its universe is the futures market available on Binance Global, excluding memecoins and GameFi tokens.
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Meta tends to perform strongest in sustained trending environments where directional momentum persists. Performance may moderate during momentum crashes or in prolonged mean-reverting regimes, where price dynamics are unstable or reverse frequently.
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Alongside trading alpha, Meta USDT captures funding income through collateral optimisation. Collateral is frequently maintained in BTC while directional exposure is hedged via futures, which lets the strategy earn funding rates as an additional return component.
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An Investment Committee comprising the two Co-CEOs, the CFO, the CTO, the Head of Quantitative Research and the Head of Engineering meets weekly to review performance, risk metrics and strategic adjustments. Day-to-day risk monitoring and operational oversight run 24/7. Emergency actions, including suspending a strategy or reducing exposure, are authorised by the Head of Quantitative Research and the Head of Engineering.
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A basis trade or a funding-rate carry earns its return from one structural spread — between spot and futures, or between the two sides of a perpetual. Meta is cross-sectional instead: it takes long and short positions across many assets at once and earns from how those assets perform relative to one another, using more than 200 sub-strategies rather than one repeated trade. Funding income is present in Meta USDT, but as a secondary component from collateral optimisation, not as the main engine.
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Because its return does not depend on the market going up. A directional portfolio and a market-neutral one are driven by different things, so holding both tends to smooth the combined result: the neutral sleeve can contribute in flat or falling markets, when a long-only position cannot. That is also why market-neutral allocations are used as a low-correlation diversifier rather than as a replacement for directional exposure.
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Three things, mainly. Relationships between assets can break down, so pairs that historically moved together stop doing so and both sides of a position lose at once. Execution can slip: net exposure drifts during rebalancing, and in thin liquidity the fills are worse than modelled. And a strategy can simply stop working as the inefficiency it exploited disappears — which is why sub-strategies are monitored with rolling metrics and deactivated at predefined thresholds. Market-neutral reduces exposure to market direction; it does not remove risk.
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Meta has been trading live since April 2023. The monthly figures above also cover January 2021 to March 2023 — that earlier stretch is backtested, and the chart marks the point where the backtest ends and live trading begins. The models behind Meta are monitored continuously against rolling performance metrics, with predefined thresholds for deactivating a sub-strategy whose edge decays.
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Meta USDT holds USDT as collateral, so all performance is measured in USDT. In contrast, Meta BTC uses BTC as collateral with the goal of increasing BTC holdings. However, this means the strategy’s performance depends on BTC price movements. Meta BTC is ideal for clients who want to grow their Bitcoin holdings. With Meta BTC, you can boost your Bitcoin — it targets approximately +15% yearly returns on top of your BTC holdings.
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Yes—your funds stay on your own exchange account at all times. The system connects using API keys with trade-only or read-only permissions, meaning it can never withdraw your crypto. You keep full custody, and all trading activity is visible directly in your exchange account.
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The minimum required amount depends on the exchange: $500 on Bybit, and $1,000 on Binance and Hyperliquid — preferably in USDT, USDC, or BTC. Other crypto equivalents are also accepted, but stablecoins or BTC are recommended as they are optimal for the start of strategy execution.
Keep reading
Meta on exchanges and related strategies
Where Meta runs, how it sits beside the other strategies, and the documents behind the numbers.
Run Meta on an exchange
Other Stoic AI strategies
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Automated Bitcoin Yield — Meta in BTC
The same Meta engine denominated in BTC, aimed at growing a Bitcoin holding.
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