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6. Asset selection and portfolio composition

6.1 Asset agnosticism

Dio's strategies are designed to be asset-agnostic. The ladder methodology, market making approach, and accumulation mechanisms work identically across all supported asset classes, from large-cap equities to digital assets.

  • Sufficient liquidity. The asset must have enough orderbook depth to fill orders at the configured quantities without excessive slippage.
  • Sufficient volatility. The asset must exhibit price oscillations at the ladder's operating timescale to generate trading opportunities.
  • Venue support. The asset must be tradeable on a supported venue (Interactive Brokers, Alpaca, Kraken, Hyperliquid, or Lighter).

The engine treats each trading pair as a fully independent instance. Different assets can run different strategies (Jacobs Ladder vs. MM), different accumulation parameters, and different oracle overrides simultaneously.

6.2 Selection criteria

While Dio is asset-agnostic at the engine level, the selection of specific assets to trade is a portfolio construction decision made by the operator.

  • Well-established market presence. Assets with multiple years of historical data are preferred, and matter more than ever under the oracle's methodology: its drawdown references, survival replay, and aggressiveness bias are all computed from the merged history, so a longer, cleaner series produces better-calibrated sizing.
  • Liquidity and market depth. Higher liquidity assets ensure efficient order execution with minimal slippage, which is critical for strategies that depend on tight spreads.
  • Market capitalization-based stability. Higher market cap assets are prioritized for stability, as they tend to exhibit more reliable mean-reversion and lower tail risk.
  • Fundamental quality. Assets should have genuine utility, strong fundamentals, and sustainable ecosystems. Purely speculative instruments increase the risk of permanent impairment, which no survivability model can hedge.
  • Yield-bearing assets (optional). For operators who wish to compound returns through yield, preference is given to assets that support dividends, coupons, staking, or lending.

6.3 Operational considerations

The engine performs best under specific technical conditions. Operators should consider the following when selecting assets and configuring parameters:

  • Liquidity depth. Assets with deeper orderbooks allow the engine to fill orders consistently without excessive slippage, which is critical for tight ladders.
  • Volatility profile. The ladder requires price oscillation at the resolved interval's timescale to generate trade cycles. Assets that trend in one direction for extended periods will accumulate without realizing profits; the oracle widens spacing and shrinks size as the drawdown deepens, but cannot manufacture reversals.
  • Order sizing relative to market depth. The configured qty anchors the oracle's search lower bound and should remain small relative to orderbook depth at the target levels to avoid moving the market.
  • Fee structure awareness. Fees enter the oracle's survival replay on both sides of every fill, and the MM strategy derives its minimum spread from cached maker fees with GTC post-only orders preventing taker execution.

The system supports running any number of concurrent trading pairs, limited only by API rate limits and available capital. The operator configures each pair independently.