Volume 1, Number 6        March 18, 2006                    Archives

Welcome to "BioComp Investors & Traders"
A newsletter / journal for financially interested customers and friends.

 
CONTENTS

  • BioComp Dakota 1.4: Charting

  • Introducing Dakota Express: Quick, Easy and, yes, even more Affordable

  • Tech Corner: Answers to Common Dakota Questions

  • Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities Magazine

BioComp Dakota 1.4

Dakota Charting
Up to this point, and if you've watched any of the videos, you know that Dakota had primitive graphing of the traded price, the signal and the equity curve... Well, as you can see above, we removed those simple trend plots and put in some good charting instead.  Our customers agree:

"I like the new graphics..."
   -  Steve

 "Dakota 1.4 looks great!"
  -  Charley

   "A significant advance! Charting features give us more tools to understand what's happening during trades. Plus the added speed is great!  Hats off to you and your programmers!"
      -  Michael		   "Very good job on V1.4. I noticed a lot of improvements. Especially the speed on importing text files has improved! Nice layout screens etc, keep up the good work."
      -  Dennis

If you are interested in looking at the charting, visit this page: Version 1.4 Charting (it might take a bit to load).  If you want to see the charting in action, you can watch a Dakota Charting Video.

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Introducing Dakota Express
No programming and a slimmer price: $299

With the full version of Dakota you have the ability to write scripts to create trading "bots" (adaptive trading systems) and for stops.  However, not everyone is a programmer and some people would like to just use the bots and stops we and other users have created.  So we created Dakota Express, a version of Dakota without scripting but with easy import of "ScriptBots" and "ScriptStops" created by us and other users.  And that's more than a few so far.  Not only do you get the trading bots and stops built-into Dakota, but these are also downloadable from the Dakota private web site:

Double Smoothed Stochastic Contributed by a user, this bot trades counter-trend by trading the crossing of two different double smoothed stochastic oscillators that differ on the speed of their second smoothing. The period of the stochastic, the period of the first smoothing, and the period of the fast and slow second smoothings are all adaptable parameters in Dakota.  Try it on the S&P500. Especially long only.
 
Swing Trader Pessimist A pessimist version of the Swing Trader bot.  Seems to do well on Natural gas using Pinnacle's NG.RAD data for the last 5 years (60% winners, +20 points vs. buy and hold of -20, 0.94 straightness)
 
AD Momentum Hybrid The first published "Hybrid" ScriptBot which switches it's behavior based on BotID, thus a swarm is half Advance Decline bots and half Momentum bots.
 
Advance Decline Pessimist Bot from the Help file tutorial of the same name
 
Self Adjusting RSI The Self-Adjusting RSI ScriptBot based on David Sepiashvili's article in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities (TASC), Feb 2006 issue.
 
Jacinta Chan Bollinger Bands (BBZ) A Z-Score / Bollinger Band trade bot based on Jacinta Chan's article in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities (TASC), March 2006 issue.
 
PolyCaster Computes a polynomial forecast model then calculates the difference between today's and tomorrow's forecasted price.  Trades the change in those forecasts (essentially, a price acceleration)
 
Advance/Decline Poly Blend Blends Advance/Decline pessimism with price acceleration forecasts.  Try it on the British Pound vs. the US$, LONG only, over the last 10 years.
 

Dakota Express is the full Dakota enjoyed by all, but just without any programming.  With Dakota Express you can...

  • Get started with Dakota at a very affordable price.  We've priced it well below the user suggested price to remove any barriers.
  • Use bots and stops written by others without programming
  • Use it as a second license... Develop with your full Dakota and have another affordable license for just running at home or work
  • Use Dakota Express for club members while your "bot master" creates genius systems

With this streamlining, we streamlined the price as well... only $299.

  • Express                    $299
    Dakota, just without scripting.  (works well as a second license too!  Develop with one, run with another)
    Get version 1.x, pay for upgrades to versions 2, 3, etc. as you go, if you choose.
    Upgrade later by merely paying the difference between the then-current prices
     
  • Standard                  $575
    Dakota, with scripting of your own trading bots and stops
    Get version 1.x, pay for upgrades to versions 2, 3, etc. as you go, if you choose.
     
  • Product Sponsor      $1,385
    Dakota, with scripting of your own trading bots and stops
    Receive all Dakota product updates for the life of the product
    Receive all future BioComp-authored bots at no charge

After nearly 10 years, many customers recognize that the Sponsor level is a good deal.

Dakota orders can be placed on-line at:  http://www.biocompsystems.com/store/financial/index.htm
(NOTE: We process orders on weekends so you will be able to download and get going Friday night, Saturday or Sunday, too)

Long time BioComp Customer?  You may automatically receive a Silver (10%), Gold (15%) or Platinum (25%) Preferred Customer Discount when we process your order.  Read more about our Preferred Customer Program.  We honor and respect our customers and the value we've shared together over the years.

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Tech Notes: Q & A
 Being a new product using a new technology, we get a LOT of questions about Dakota.  We expect and encourage that.  Here are a few with answers:

Q: Can a bot have more than 2 adaptable parameters?
A: Yes.  Many of the videos show bots with only 1 or 2 adaptable parameters, but technically there is no limit.  Practically speaking, 2-4 are typical.  The Double Smoothed Stochastic bot listed above has 4.  The more you have, the weaker the ability for any algorithm to optimize them and your CPU fan will spin a bit faster (more compute intensive).

Q: Can a bot have multiple time-series (not just underlying instrument) as inputs?
A: Yes.  There is no limit (technically) to the information you can provide to a bot.  You can use OHLC, volume, open interest, commitment of traders, cross market data, signals from other trading systems, tidal levels on Jupiter, whatever you wish.  The data just needs to be in one or more delimited text files importable by Dakota.  Dakota will even date/time synchronize it if the data is different times or lengths.

Q: Can bots of different types be mixed in one swarm?
A: Yes. You can code your bots to have different behaviors based on a "BotID", thus easily you can have some number of your bots be moving average systems, some can be swing traders, or whatever behavior you put in there.  There's an example downloadable by Dakota users in the list above: AD Momentum Hybrid.

Q: What's the underlying mechanism for bot's adaptation?
A: Two mechanisms are provided so far: "Flocking" and "Equity Controller". You can write your own as well. Flocking is explained in this newsletter: http://www.biocompsystems.com/newsletters/Bits/v1n3.htm and the Equity Controller is explained in this newsletter: http://www.biocompsystems.com/newsletters/Bits/v1n4.htm. Scroll down to "Tech Notes" sections.

Q: How many people use it successfully in real-world trading?
A: That is always a good question.  We don't have a window into our customers activities, but from our conversations with some customers, more and more are telling us they are now shifting from "experimentation" to "real money".  This is good progress, considering the product was first release to beta testers some few months ago.

Q: Will I be able to utilize this program on my office and home computers? (one at a time of course)
A: Yes.  Dakota has an easy internet-based license check-in/check-out so you can move it around at will.  This scheme was requested by Dakota users.

Q: I would like to use Jurik indicators in ScriptBots.  Will this be possible?
A: Yes, it WILL be possible with ScriptBots shortly.  Jurik Research (Mark and company) have just provided us the necessary license so that we may integrate it within ScriptBots and ScriptStops.  It is possible now to use Jurik's indicators if you are a programmer and use the Visual Basic 6 Dakota Bot source code (it isn't very hard for a modestly experienced programmer to make the calls to the DLLs).

Q: Will Dakota run on intraday data, like 5 min bars?
A: Yes, however the current product is End of Day, but users are loading and running intraday bars.  Coming is Dakota R/T (Real Time), presently in development. However, Dakota R/T will be a bit more sophisticated on bars: it will support:

  • N period bars (like 5 minute, 30 minute, or 1 hour, etc.)
  • N Tick bars (produce a new bar after specified ticks go by)
  • Volume-based bars (new bar every N units transacted)
  • Range bars (produce a new bar every time a new range is achieved... very nice... faster bars during faster moving prices)

If you have questions, please email them to me at cmcook@biocompsystems.com.

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Stocks & Commodities Magazine

Be sure to look for our "got bots?" ad in the May issue of the Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine, hitting the shelves April 15th.

 

Also watch for Dakota in Stocks & Commodities' "Traders' Tips" section each month.  Dakota has been in February, March, April and now May's issues.

 

 

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Closure

If you find this newsletter interesting, please stay subscribed.  If you think others might like getting it, forward this email to them or post a link to our website in your favorite trading discussion group.  That helps us grow.  We'd appreciate it.  If you have suggestions, please email me at cmcook@biocompsystems.com.

This newsletter is brought to you by BioComp Systems, Inc.  Please forward it to anyone who might be interested.  They can also subscribe at: http://www.biocompsystems.com/cgi-bin/mojo.cgi?f=s&l=Profit

These documents are provided for informational purposes only. The information contained in this document represents the current view of BioComp Systems on the material discussed as of the date of publication.  Materials written should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of BioComp and BioComp cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.   INFORMATION PROVIDED IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND FREEDOM FROM INFRINGEMENT. Statements of equity performance are hypothetical and have not been substantiated by records of actual trading.  Hypothetical or simulated performance results have certain inherent limitations. Unlike an actual performance record, simulated results do not represent actual trading.  Also, since the trades have not actually been executed, the results may have under- or over-compensated for the impact, if any, of certain market factors, such as lack of liquidity.  Simulated trading programs in general are also subject to the fact that they are designed with the benefit of hindsight. No representation is being made that any account will or is likely to achieve profits or losses similar to those mentioned.

The user assumes the entire risk as to the accuracy and the use of this document. This document may be copied and distributed subject to the following conditions: 1) The entire document must be copied without modification; 2) All copies must contain BioComp's copyright notice and any other notices provided therein; and 3) This document may not be distributed for profit.  All trademarks acknowledged.  (C) Copyright BioComp Systems, Inc. 2006.