At this time nothing, although we do require you to fill out a brief form in order to receive the free 25 x25 Bond System. At some time in the future we may charge a fee to join the club.

Do I have to do anything to be in the club?

No there is nothing required of you, although in our newsletter we often discuss trading ideas and welcome feedback from members, in which case we may print your feedback in subsequent issues. Also from time to time we may organize online Chat Sessions , all members are invited to attend and participate in these online sessions.

Who designs the systems you offer for sale?

There are a variety of people who design the systems.

Why can't I duplicate your results exactly?

We use back adjusted continuous contract data for all of our testing, and if your data is not the same as ours you probably will not achieve the exact results. However your historical results should not differ significantly from ours . Other causes of differences may be incorrectly set stops, differences in maxbarsback settings, different starting or ending dates or variations in exchange or contract settings. Check to make sure that all these parameters match the settings provided in the system documentation. With each system we provide the exact data that we used for testing in an ASCII format text file, If you use our data and your settings match ours your results should match ours exactly. For the  bond systems use the settings below.

How do I save files from your website?

We have a tutorial to lead you through the process, go here to see it

How do I transfer a system into TradeStation®™?

We have a tutorial to lead you through the process, go here to see it.

How do I load the data that comes with my system into TradeStation®™?

We have a tutorial to lead you through the process, go here to see it.

How do I load a system into TradeStation®™?

We have a tutorial to lead you through the process, go here to see it.

What method do you use to link your Commodity Contracts?

All of the Traders Club systems are developed on Pinnacle back-adjusted continuous contract day-session-only data. The Reverse Adjusted method we use leaves the current contract alone, prior contracts are shifted up or down to splice cleanly with their neighboring contract, resulting in a series with no contract to contract gap. For further information contact Pinnacle.  Go Here to see the list of of rollover days for all of the Data that Pinnacle Provides.

I see my signals on my charts but I am not getting orders in the System Tracking Control Center

Format system properties and make sure that generates orders for the nest bar is checked

Right click on the chart
Select format analysis techniques
Choose the system
Choose format
Choose properties tab
Make sure check box for generate orders is checked

I have a system,  do you want to hear about it?

By all means, if you are a system developer and you would like to make your system available to the club, we would like to see your results and discuss our policies with you. E-mail us with System Submission in the subject Field and we will get back to you promptly. We cannot of course guarantee that we will agree that your system is worthy of inclusion in the System Club offerings, but if it measures up and fills a niche that we currently have open, then chances are good that we will offer it to our members.

I heard that you send out an Informative Bulletin, how do I get it?

Currently all members, who have filled out our questionnaire will receive the Bulletin.

I don't have TradeStation®™Can I still use the systems with my trading software?

We provide text documentation of the system as well as .ela files that can be imported into TradeStation®™,  and SuperCharts®™ 4.0. Currently we do not support other formats, however you are free to use the system code in order to create a similar system using your own software.

I have heard a lot of pros and cons regarding optimizing trading systems. Logically it would seem that the more frequently one optimized their system, the more in tune with current market conditions it would be.
Do you recommend optimizing trading systems? If so, how often and why do you believe this?

Optimization is a very controversial topic and most system designers either love it and carry it to an extreme or hate it and don't do it at all. I believe that the proper use of optimization is somewhere in the middle with a personal bias of trying to keep it to the necessary minimum.

We believe that optimization, used correctly, can be a learning tool that can lead to developing robust systems that are not overly optimized. This statement must sound inherently contradictory but here is an example of how werecently used optimization to develop part of a crude oil trading system that was not optimized.

We were at the point in our research where we wanted to find an indicator that we could use to tell us the prevailing trend of the crude oil market. One simple trend indicator is simply to look at the slope of a moving average. If the slope is up, the trend is up. If the slope is down, the trend is down. But what moving average should we follow?

We ran a quick study of a broad range of moving averages to answer this question. In our optimization, the 36 day MA was the clear winner. The fact that 36 was such a clear winner created a problem for us. The idea of using the slope of a moving average was suspect because the results were extremely dependent on finding just the right moving average. The results using 36 were excellent but if we used 25, 30, or 40 the results were not nearly as good. We had no margin for error and we knew that 36 was not going to be the best number in the future. (Optimized parameters are only the best in the past, not the future .)

Instead of using the slope of a moving average we decided to use the relationship of the current price to a moving average to tell us the trend. Our logic was that if the current price was above the moving average the trend must be up and if the price was below the moving average the trend must be down. When we ran the next optimization to select our moving average we found that any MA between 20 and 60 produced excellent results. None of these were quite as good as using 36 in the "slope" strategy but they were all acceptable and they were all much better than using 25, 30 or 40 with the "slope" strategy. The idea of looking at the relationship of the current price to the MA was clearly much more robust than using the slope of the MA. We picked 30 as the MA we would use. We could have picked 50 or 20 and the historical results would have been almost exactly the same. We picked 30 because it would have a big margin for error on either side. We could have picked 50 or 40 and still had a big margin for error but we favored a smaller moving average because it would be more likely to keep us in tune with the current market trend than a longer moving average. When faced with decisions like this, where all of the parameters produce similar favorable results, pick parameters that seem the most consistent with the logic of the system you are creating. Don't just look at profitability. You also have to give heavy weight to the percentage of winning trades and total number of trades (more is better) when reviewing the optimization report.

The solution we picked as the result of the two optimization studies was a very robust solution and gave us great confidence that our chosen parameter of 30 as our MA would not have to be re-optimized in the future

In regard to the part of your question dealing with how frequently you should re-optimize: I would strongly caution you to avoid this practice entirely. A good system with robust and adaptive parameters should not require re- optimization. When building a system we want to try and use indicators and parameters that are adaptive to changing market conditions. For example if we wanted to conduct an optimization to find the ideal point to take profits in a system we might come up with a solution of $1500 that produces the best historical results. We then decide that we need to re-optimize this number every six months. This would be an example of faulty system design where optimization appears necessary.  The correct solution would be to express the profit target as some multiple of Average True Range (average daily range adjusted for gaps). If, for example, we decide to take profits at 3 ATRs, we will take bigger profits when the market is volatile and smaller profits when the market is quiet. No re-optimization is required because this system adjusts to changes in the market automatically.

Correct use of optimization is a topic that is very complex and important to understand. This brief reply to your question does not cover all the issues involved but hopefully it should be of some help. For additional articles on topics related to system design I would suggest you join our System Traders Club.