The Computerized Trader

The Computerized Trader

by Gibbons Burke

The Computerized Trader column debuted in the May, 1992 issue of Futures Magazine, and it's appeared in every issue since. Here's a list of all the CT columns I've published, with a brief abstract of the contents. Starting with January 1996, the text of the columns are available online. I maintain a list of Internet resources useful to traders called Wahoo!.

On Newstands now!

August 1996 - Deflating the Dow

Stocks always go up... right? Not exactly. When you take the air out of inflated stock indexes, it paints a much different picture. This column shows what happens when you chart the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a constant dollar basis. Did you know that the Dow lost 75% of its real value between 1966 and 1982?

Quick Clicks:

1992 Columns
1993 Columns
1994 Columns
1995 Columns
1996 Columns - Now available online!

1992 Columns

May - A Continuous Debate: Continuous contracts for back-testing trading systems; OS/2 vs. Windows.
June - Realizing a Trading System: Computer Associate's BASIC development language, Realizer, makes a good technical analysis platform.
July - The Debate Continues...: In which the writer airs and responds to reader letters regarding the proper use of continuous contracts when testing trading systems.
August - Back up, Jack!: Tips for the proper care and feeding of your PC, including regular backups, disk diagnostics, and power line conditioners.
September - Building on the Tower of Babel: A rant about the lack of standards in the futures industry, in symbols used to denote futures and options, price quotation conventions, and computer data formats.
October - Objects of Desire: As a companion piece to the cover story on Steve Jobs and the NeXT computer's use on Wall Street, object-oriented programming is explained.
November - GLOBEX data: Better than the real thing?: How to deal with the nastiness of 24-hour electronic trading and how it affects technical analysis; Bob-in-a-Box: Bob Prechter's autmatic Elliot Wave counting engine; the truth about Futures Truth.
December - Hard look at new software: A look at new products at the 1992 FIA Expo in Chicago. New products featured were SuperCharts from Omega Research, PointsAhead from The Small Investor's Software Co., and new data offerings from the Futures Industry Institute.

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1993 Columns

January - Turtle madness: Former "Turtle" (Richard Dennis trading acolyte) Russell Sands makes hay by disclosing the reknowned trading system of his former mentor. Here's the meat of the vaunted system - proving yet again that there is nothing new under the sun.
February - Computer software to help view the forests and the trees: A look at software programs that help a trader test trading system performance on a portfolio-wide basis, a vital test for simulating the real-time effect on your account equity.
March - Neural nets go to school: An announcement of an academic effort to determine if neural networks can help one trade the markets profitable; an online trading software guide called Wall Street Software Digest.
April - Easing the sting of April 15: A description of a seasonal trade in 30-year Treasury Bond futures which continues to be profitable.
May - Comments and queries: Some letters from readers and responses.
June - Scanning the horizons: Two inexpensive shareware offerings for DOS PCs which, among other functions, allow the user to scan a database for instruments that meet technical criteria. Update on the tax day trade from the April issue: $2,781.25 gain per contract!
July - Getting traders online

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1994 Columns

January - Know thy data: Dealing with computer price data for futures markets requires diligence, attention to meticulous detail, and a knowledge of where problems might arise. A few tips for how to avoid or correct common problems.
February - Picking nits and niggling ticks: How to deal with the different minimum tick intervals used in each market. Includes a handy algorithm for rounding prices the nearest tick.
March - A sharper Sharpe ratio

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1995 Columns

January - Expo's top gun software: The annual roundup of new and exiting software offerings at the 1994 FIA Expo. This was the year of vaporware, featuring System Writer for Windows and Metastock for Windows - two products that are fun to look at trade shows but which you couldn't take home with you. Real-time vendors FutureSource and CQG were both showing products featuring technical indicators from systems guru Tom DeMark. A new visual display system, ScanShift, was mistakenly called ScanSight in the column. Mea culpa.
February - Tangled in a web

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1996 Columns

January - Managed futures on the net: A look at sites on the World Wide Web which manage and track professional commodity and futures traders. Rankings, performance charts and tables, and contact information are available - but some sites are more current and up-to-date than otheres.
February - Dialing for digital dollars: The internet offers an opportunity to busnesses that want to sell services, products, and information on the World Wide Web, but establishing a fast, private, secure way to pay for these things has been a stumbling block. Mark Twain Bank is offering accounts in a digital cash, a new technology for un-traceable, completely private electronic cash pioneered by cryptologist David Chaum and his company Digicash. See my Web Links page for a list of electronic money information resources. How soon till there's a futures contract for trading digital currencies?
March - Plan your trades, trade your plan: A look at $ecure - a trading diary-keeping and discipline enforcing program from ChaRT software.
April - King of all media channels: The Internet has created a media channel which allows major players from formerly non-competetive areas to compete against one another. The result has been an explosion of information on the internet used by traders, from real-time quotes, news, to trading system vendors and advisors.
May - Dukes of URL: The internet has spawned a school of traders who make their trading expertise available to the world, gratis. This article focuses on two of them: Troutman, Defender of Sticks, and The Consistent Bond Trader. The latter has given up the ghost, however, as of 5 May 1996.
Also in this issue is Years of the comet - a look at the historical lore of comets, and what they might portend for commodity prices.
June - Conducting business on the Net: Classical pianist and self-described "wunderkind" Philip Hotchkiss has rolled into town (the Net) like Professor Harold Hill in the Broadway musical "The Music Man" and has built a concert hall. But you won't be hearing any Beethoven or Brahms concertos from your Web browser anytime soon. In this venue, trading performance is the featured act. A review of this well-designed, site.
July - Net brokerage: Electronic stock trading and brokerage on the internet is now de riguer but futures brokers, many of whom have excellent informational web sites have been slow to create online order and account tracking facilities on the new electronic frontier. A few pioneers are noted.
August - Deflating the Dow: Stocks always go up... right? Not exactly. When you take the air out of inflated stock indexes, it paints a much different picture. This column shows what happens when you chart the Dow Jones Industrial Average on a constant dollar basis. Did you know that the Dow lost 75% of its real value between 1966 and 1982?

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