The next WTSUG meeting will be held on Wednesday, November 9, 2011 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

NOVEMBER 9 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm          Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm -                          Strategy Design 103
Bruce DeVault

In this follow up to the WTSUG 2011 strategy design series, we’ll take a look at the ABC pattern strategy we’ve been working on as a group. Please bring your ideas for how to filter the strategy and test results from trying it out, and we’ll go over some of the group’s findings and ideas, and evaluate what we have so far and how to take the strategy further from here.

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, October 26, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

OCTOBER 26 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm          Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm -                          Live Remote Presentation: Traders’ Toolbox
Jan Arps

Jan Arps literally learned to trade at his father’s knee, drawing stock charts by hand for his engineer father, who was a Technical Trader. As a kid, Jan’s neat hand made the daily entries on his father’s charts. He learned to use a slide rule in grade 6. He soon became a whiz on Dad’s Frieden mechanical calculator. Pop traded up to an electronic model Frieden in 1958 ($3600 in 1958 = $48,000 in 1998). We’re talking about a serious trader!

The rest of Jan’s story is testimony to a life-long career as an early adapter, applying complex mathematical concepts to markets…..A career uniquely structured to take ongoing advantage of the explosion in computer power and its impact on making money for traders. When Jan graduated from high school, Caltech and MIT were the two top engineering schools in the USA. They remain 1 and 2 today. Jan was accepted by both and chose Caltech. He financed his tuition with trading profits. He graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree and was recruited by Shell Oil Company to prospect for oil in the Louisiana Oil Patch. After 3 years of on-the-job experience, he took off his hard hat, applied for and was accepted into the Harvard MBA program.

One of his final year MBA courses at Harvard was “Management of New Enterprises”. A course requirement was the creation of a business plan for a specific new venture. Jan authored a plan for an oilfield service business providing real-time sub-surface telemetry analysis to drillers assessing potential pay zones.

Upon graduation he opted not to enter Corporate America as an anointed Harvard MBA but went out and found the financing to execute his “term paper” business plan. Arps Corporation grew to a multi-million dollar business that was ultimately acquired by the Baroid Division of National Lead. (Today the subsurface telemetry business has mushroomed into a 3 billion dollar industry.)

Jan had always wanted to trade full-time. Now he had “size” trading capital. From the late 60’s through the 70’s, Jan was a combination Trader and Venture Capitalist, specializing in the technology sector.

The organized option markets of today did not exist then. He became on of a handful of option writers in the USA. He responded to the needs of large brokerage firms, whose clients pioneered using puts and calls as part of sophisticated hedging strategies. Black-Scholes didn’t exist then — it was every man for himself. Writing options is not for the meek; ask Victor Niederhoffer.

During this time, Jan discovered the futures markets and acquired his first Apple II personal computer. He began converting his own trading strategies to PC software. He traded his way through the 80’s, focusing on the futures markets while managing other technology investments.

In the mid 1980’s, Microsoft Windows was beginning its reign. By 1991, newly designed trading platforms, known as trading assistants, were beginning to open the world of Windows-based intraday trading to individuals. Now individual traders could compete with the pros on a relatively level playing field. By 1992 Jan had left behind his technology investments to concentrate on trading and converting his own trading ideas and those of others into systems and indicators that exploited the many features of these platforms.

Today, Jan has clients around the world who ask him to convert sophisticated trading concepts into trading solutions. In addition to having created an impressive array of original trading studies, he has also translated published concepts of many great traders. Jan offers a library of hundreds of studies to traders worldwide through his company, Jan Arps’ Traders’ Toolbox.

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

SEPTEMBER 28 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm –

Live Remote Presentation: ABC Patterns Trading Research
Suri Duddella

Suri will present his new ABC patterns research on how to detect the  qualified ABC Patterns and how he finds trend and trade setups using market context.  He will  discuss the various pattern elements like trend strength, location of the pattern, size, pattern symmetry and clarity. Suri will show how to trade ABC patterns and all its related patterns like Double Top/Bottoms, Gartleys and  various other patterns with specific rules in Intraday/EOD markets.  He will present price and time targets for ABC Patterns with many trading examples.

About Suri Duddella from his website www.surinotes.com:

Suri Duddella is a private trader for the past 15+ years using his proprietary mathematical and algorithmic models and pattern recognition methods. Prior to joining the financial markets, Suri was an Engineering consultant for Fortune 100 companies. Suri authoried and published the book “Trade Chart Patterns Like the Pros” in 2007.

Suri Duddella was a founder of a financial research and analysis company from 1998 to 2005 specializing in financial modeling,
research/analysis, and technology architecture for financial institutions, investment research and investment media companies. Suri’s research company was ranked the “Best of the Web” by Forbes Magazine from 200 to 2003, and featured in Barron’s for “Excellent Technical Analysis” in 2002.

His research has been reviewed and featured in Forbes, Barron’s, Active Trader, Stocks and Commodities, TRADERS’ magazine (Germany), TradersJournal, Washington Business Journal Magazines and various newspapers. Suri has also appeared on various television and radio shows. In addition, he presented his research at various investment conferences in the United States and Germany.

Suri’s trading methodology and interview were published in the book “Bulls, Bears, and Brains of the Financial Internet” written by Adam
Leitzes and Joshua Solan, and he has been interviewed in Stocks and Commodities and TRADERS’ magazines.

Suri Duddella is a member fo the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts (AAPTA) and an affiliate member of the Market Technicians Association (MTA).

CANCELED DUE TO EARTHQUAKE DAMAGE AT POTOMAC LIBRARY – SEE YOU ALL IN SEPTEMBER!

The next WTSUG meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

AUGUST 24 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm –

Live Remote Presentation: Trading ABC Patterns with Market Context

Suri Duddella

ABC is one of the most basic and simple yet most powerful universal pattern in Technical Analysis.  ABC Pattern is the basis for many other chart patterns like Double Bottoms/Tops, Gartley/Butterfly and Elliott Waves. Suri will discuss the how the ABC pattern forms, various formations of ABC structure and its key trigger and failure points.  Suri will show how to trade ABCs and all related patterns with specific rules in real-time market examples. He will also discuss on how to set price an time targets for ABC Patterns with many trading examples.

About Suri Duddella from his website www.surinotes.com:

Suri Duddella is a private trader for the past 15+ years using his proprietary mathematical and algorithmic models and pattern recognition methods. Prior to joining the financial markets, Suri was an Engineering consultant for Fortune 100 companies. Suri authoried and published the book “Trade Chart Patterns Like the Pros” in 2007.

Suri Duddella was a founder of a financial research and analysis company from 1998 to 2005 specializing in financial modeling,
research/analysis, and technology architecture for financial institutions, investment research and investment media companies. Suri’s research company was ranked the “Best of the Web” by Forbes Magazine from 200 to 2003, and featured in Barron’s for “Excellent Technical Analysis” in 2002.

His research has been reviewed and featured in Forbes, Barron’s, Active Trader, Stocks and Commodities, TRADERS’ magazine (Germany), TradersJournal, Washington Business Journal Magazines and various newspapers. Suri has also appeared on various television and radio shows. In addition, he presented his research at various investment conferences in the United States and Germany.

Suri’s trading methodology and interview were published in the book “Bulls, Bears, and Brains of the Financial Internet” written by Adam
Leitzes and Joshua Solan, and he has been interviewed in Stocks and Commodities and TRADERS’ magazines.

Suri Duddella is a member fo the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts (AAPTA) and an affiliate member of the Market Technicians Association (MTA).

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, July 20, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

JULY 20 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm – Seminar: Strategy Development 102

Bruce DeVault w/ Quantevo

In our previous strategy development session, we talked about the performance goals we wanted to strive towards with a trading strategy, and how those goals would affect what strategies would be most likely to see success by those measures. The group selected an ABC technical analysis pattern to look at in more detail this time around. In this session, we’ll take a look at how to conceptualize the “idea” of the trade chosen by the users group into hard and fast parameters and trading rules, and how to start to translate those inputs and rules into testable TradeStation EasyLanguage code. We’ll also talk about the steps along the way and the big picture process, including how we know if the pattern is being picked out correctly, and start thinking about what we’re going to want to test as we transition towards quantifying the performance of the strategy.

Coming up this Summer at WTSUG:

August 24 – Suri Duddella on ABC patterns

September 28 – Strategy Design 103 w/ Bruce DeVault

October 26 – Special Guest Speaker: Jan Arps

More details to follow!

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, June 15, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

JUNE 15 TOPICS:

7:00pm – 7:15pm          Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership duesand any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes intotal.

7:15pm – 7:45pm           Live in person: John Bartleman and Wouter Oosthuizen w/ TradeStation Technologies

John Bartleman, TradeStation’s VP of Product Management, will open the session and discuss TradeStation’s future developments and products, as well as take questions from the Washington DC TradeStation User’s Group.

John joined TradeStation in 1999 as the product manager for RadarScreen, and then worked on the merger with WindowOnWallStreet and managed the WindowOnWallStreet.com product.  He then became Director of Product Management for the TradeStation Platform team in 2002 working on many projects including the development and release of the Matrix window.

John has been Vice President of Product Management since 2008 and has overseen many changes in TradeStation including the acquisition and integration of the Grail Walk Forward Optimization product.

Prior to TradeStation, John worked for 5 years as a Research Systems Analystat Franklin Templeton.

7:45pm – 8:00pm           Break

8:00pm -                          After the break, Wouter Oosthuizen will brief the group about TradeStation’s integration with the Grail software.

Wouter Oosthuizen currently holds the position as Senior Software Engineer with TradeStation Technologies Inc. in Plantation,Florida.  Wouter joined TradeStation and moved with his family from South Africa to the USA in September 2010.

His previous work experience includes:

·        Completing his Masters degree in Computer Auditing, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

·        Qualifying as Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with Coopers &Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers).  During his articles he was a member of the Computer Audit Services division and developed various Computer Assisted Audit Techniques and management information systems for major clients.

·        In 1994 he left the audit profession for atrading environment.

During the past 16 years he joined more than one Merchant/Investment Bank/Hedge Fund and amongst other:

·        Setup a Neural Network Futures Fund, developed and traded in real-time various quantitative trading systems on South AfricanFutures Exchange (SAFEX) futures and bonds,

·        performed duty as SAFEX Compliance officer,

·        established and managed a futures tradingdivision,

·        developed and implemented  directional trading systems on various derivative instruments on the CME, CBOT and Eurex,

·        developed portfolio risk and money management software,

·        researched and programmed a genetic driven statistical arbitrage model,

·        assisted in implementing the Sophis (France) risk management system for a South African Hedge Fund,

·        calculated daily Value-At-Risk and monitored fund compliance within risk limits.

In 2003 Wouter started developing “The Grail”system evaluation methodology.

In recent years, Wouter has spent most of his time further developing and refining the Grail system evaluation methodology, a revolutionary approach to designing new trading strategies and objectively evaluating the robustness of new/existing trading strategies.

In 2010 Wouter sold his South African based companyTechnovest(Pty) Ltd to TradeStation and moved to Florida to assist with the implementation of the Grail Genetic/Walk-Forward Optimizer (GGO/GWFO) and Computer Assisted Strategy Builder (CASB) into the TradeStation platform.

Coming up this Summer at WTSUG:
July 20 – Strategy Design 102 (Bruce DeVault)
August 24 – Trading ABC Patterns (Suri Duddella)
September 28 – Strategy Design 103(Bruce DeVault)

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, May 25, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

MAY 25 TOPICS

7:00pm – 7:15pm          Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm -                          Seminar: Strategy Development 101
Bruce DeVault w/ Quantevo

In this follow on to last year’s successful series of presentations, Bruce DeVault will lead the first session in a 3 part series on strategy development. We’ll start by covering the basics – strategy development like so many other things is all about preparation, doing your research, having a reason for your rules, so we’ll kick off the series by identifying as a group the type of market inefficiency we want to exploit, and work through live determining the pieces of the puzzle and laying out the framework for the strategy. In the next two parts of the series (July and September) we’ll build out the strategy, conduct in-depth testing, and work as a group to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and areas where it could be taken further.

Coming up in June – Wednesday June 15th, 2011, 7:00pm at Potomac
Live in person: Wouter Oosthuizen w/ TradeStation Technologies

Wouter Oosthuizen currently holds the position as Senior Software Engineer with TradeStation Technologies Inc. in Plantation,Florida. Wouter joined TradeStation and moved with his family from South Africa to the USA in September 2010.

His previous work experience includes:

• Completing his Masters degree in Computer Auditing, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
• Qualifying as Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with Coopers &Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers). During his articles he was a member of the Computer Audit Services division and developed various Computer Assisted Audit Techniques and management information systems for major clients.
• In 1994 he left the audit profession for a trading environment.

During the past 16 years he joined more than one Merchant/Investment Bank/Hedge Fund and amongst other:

• Setup a Neural Network Futures Fund, developed and traded in real-time various quantitative trading systems on South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) futures and bonds,
• performed duty as SAFEX Compliance officer,
• established and managed a futures trading division,
• developed and implemented directional trading systems on various derivative instruments on the CME, CBOT and Eurex,
• developed portfolio risk and money management software,
• researched and programmed a genetic driven statistical arbitrage model,
• assisted in implementing the Sophis (France) risk management system for a South African Hedge Fund,
• calculated daily Value-At-Risk and monitored fund compliance within risk limits.

In 2003 Wouter started developing “The Grail” system evaluation methodology. In recent years, Wouter has spent most of his time further developing and refining the Grail system evaluation methodology, a revolutionary approach to designing new trading strategies and objectively evaluating the robustness of new/existing trading strategies.

In 2010 Wouter sold his South African based company Technovest(Pty)Ltd to TradeStation and moved to Florida to assist with the implementation of the Grail Genetic/Walk-Forward Optimizer (GGO/GWFO) and Computer Assisted Strategy Builder (CASB) into the TradeStation platform.

Drive safely, and look forward to seeing you there!

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, April 20, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

APRIL 20 TOPICS

7:00pm – 7:15pm Introductions and Opening
The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm – Remote Guest Speaker – Sunny J. Harris
with MoneyMentor.com
Sunny J. Harris
After 30 years of trading and research, Sunny Harris has developed many strategies both for herself and for clients.

More important than developing the strategies, Sunny has developed testing methodologies that have stood the test of time, and have become the defacto standard in the trading community. In this webinar Sunny will share some of her more important testing strategies, and reveal some of the tricks advertisers use to lure unsuspecting buyers with backtesting.

Her new book, TradeStation Made Easy! (Using EasyLanguage to build profits with the world’s most popular trading software) is filled with innumerable examples, walking you through from opening the box to programming profitable systems with EasyLanguage, and is available online from Amazon.com or on her website, www.moneymentor.com.

Next Month in May – Next Meeting: Wednesday May 20th, 2011, 7:00pm at Potomac
In-person seminar – Strategy Development 201
In this follow on to last year’s successful series of presentations, Bruce DeVault will lead the first session in a 3 part series on strategy development. We’ll start by covering the basics – strategy development like so many other things is all about preparation, doing your research, having a reason for your rules, so we’ll kick off the series by identifying as a group the type of market inefficiency we want to exploit, and work through live determining the pieces of the puzzle and laying out the conceptual framework for the strategy. In the next two parts of the series (July and September) we’ll build out the strategy, conduct in-depth testing, and work as a group to identify its strengths and weaknesses, and areas where it could be taken further.

Coming up in June – Wednesday June 15th, 2011, 7:00pm at Potomac
Live in person: Wouter Oosthuizen w/ TradeStation Technologies

Wouter Oosthuizen currently holds the position as Senior Software Engineer with TradeStation Technologies Inc. in Plantation,Florida. Wouter joined TradeStation and moved with his family from South Africa to the USA in September 2010.

His previous work experience includes:

• Completing his Masters degree in Computer Auditing, University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
• Qualifying as Chartered Accountant (South Africa) with Coopers &Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers). During his articles he was a member of the Computer Audit Services division and developed various Computer Assisted Audit Techniques and management information systems for major clients.
• In 1994 he left the audit profession for a trading environment.

During the past 16 years he joined more than one Merchant/Investment Bank/Hedge Fund and amongst other:

• Setup a Neural Network Futures Fund, developed and traded in real-time various quantitative trading systems on South African Futures Exchange (SAFEX) futures and bonds,
• performed duty as SAFEX Compliance officer,
• established and managed a futures trading division,
• developed and implemented directional trading systems on various derivative instruments on the CME, CBOT and Eurex,
• developed portfolio risk and money management software,
• researched and programmed a genetic driven statistical arbitrage model,
• assisted in implementing the Sophis (France) risk management system for a South African Hedge Fund,
• calculated daily Value-At-Risk and monitored fund compliance within risk limits.

In 2003 Wouter started developing “The Grail” system evaluation methodology. In recent years, Wouter has spent most of his time further developing and refining the Grail system evaluation methodology, a revolutionary approach to designing new trading strategies and objectively evaluating the robustness of new/existing trading strategies.

In 2010 Wouter sold his South African based company Technovest(Pty)Ltd to TradeStation and moved to Florida to assist with the implementation of the Grail Genetic/Walk-Forward Optimizer (GGO/GWFO) and Computer Assisted Strategy Builder (CASB) into the TradeStation platform.

Drive safely, and look forward to seeing you there!

The WTSUG meeting on Wednesday, March 16, 2011 was held from 7:00pm to 8:30pm at Potomac Library of Montgomery County, 10101 Glenolden Drive, Potomac, MD 20854.

Agenda:

7:00pm – 7:15pm Introductions and Opening

The group will give brief introductions to the group for any new attendees. Time will be made available for dealing with membership dues and any other minor administration items, but not to exceed 15 minutes in total.

7:15pm – 8:00pm Discussion w/ Vendor
Sagi Richberg

An outside vendor Sagi Richberg who is setting up a market data provider website service will speak briefly to WTSUG about his business idea for feedback, and WTSUG members will have an opportunity to ask questions or give feedback on this possible new business providing market data for traders.

8:00pm – 8:15pm Break

8:15pm – 9:00pm TradeStation EasyLanguage
Bruce DeVault

We’ll tackle some TradeStation EasyLanguage coding scenarios when building a strategy to test, and discuss some pros and cons of different approaches for how to go about designing a strategy. Bring your TradeStation EasyLanguage programming or usage questions and don’t miss this opportunity to bounce strategy ideas off of all of the traders in the group!

Drive safely, and look forward to seeing you there!