About plaintape
plaintape is the live, daily-updated tape of a
systematic trend-following futures program — performance, positions,
risk, and methodology — published openly so the work can be judged on
evidence rather than claims. It is operated by Jesus
Garcia, a systematic futures trader and senior software
engineer based in Seattle, running the program with real capital.
The record published on this site begins in November 2025, the
first month reconciled daily against Interactive Brokers NAV
statements; the tape's "Trading since" figure is taken from that
data, not typed in.
The operator behind the tape
Jesus is a Senior Software Engineer and Tech Lead at Google Cloud with
five-plus years of experience building production-grade distributed
systems on GCP. He holds a B.A. in Cognitive Science from
UC Berkeley (2016, with a minor in Computer Science).
- Google Cloud — Tech Lead, Lustre HPC (2021–present).
Leads a cross-functional team of eight engineers delivering a new
cloud storage service for ML and data infrastructure workloads.
Architected the full service stack (CI/CD, dataplane provisioning,
control plane, automated repair). Achieved 99.5% SLO availability
and full GCP enterprise-readiness compliance.
- Google Cloud — Senior SWE, NetApp partnership.
Led GCP-side architecture for containerizing the NetApp filesystem
to run natively on GCP; coordinated 20+ horizontal compliance
requirements across eight engineers.
The trading program leans on the same engineering discipline: the
pysystemtrade stack runs on GCP behind IAP-secured zero-trust
networking, with Terraform-managed infrastructure, Docker-packaged
services, and Cloud Ops Agent monitoring. Day-to-day development is
in Python; the cloud infrastructure layer is Terraform and Docker.
The system
- Style: systematic trend-following with carry, mean
reversion, relative momentum, and skew rules layered on top.
- Universe: 269 futures instruments across global
equity indices, government bonds, short-term rates, FX, commodities,
metals, energies, crypto, and volatility.
- Sizing: volatility targeting (25% annualised), with a
forecast cap at ±20 and a portfolio risk overlay.
- Execution: hybrid model combining daily portfolio
rebalancing with hourly limit-order execution for capital
efficiency.
- Stack:
pysystemtrade
(Rob Carver's open-source Python framework) + Interactive Brokers for
execution + Barchart for prices, deployed on Google Cloud
(Terraform, Docker, IAP).
- Capital: the track record shown here is the
operator's own (proprietary) capital. No outside investors, no fund.
What this site is
- Updated daily from real broker fills and live
pysystemtrade state — not backtest output.
- Public on purpose. The point is a verifiable,
timestamped track record that anyone can audit.
- Linked to a Substack
(@plaintape)
for monthly performance write-ups, methodology deep-dives, and
commentary on managed futures more broadly.
What this site is not
- Not a fund, and not an offer or solicitation.
- Not an investment adviser or broker-dealer.
- Not investment advice. PAST PERFORMANCE IS NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS.
Futures trading involves substantial risk.
Registration status
Plaintape LLC is registered with the CFTC as a Commodity Trading Advisor (NFA ID 0580378) and its NFA membership application is pending. The firm is not yet accepting client accounts. Registration does not imply that the CFTC or NFA has approved or endorsed the firm, its trading program, or the material on this site.
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