Trader Tech Talk

In this episode, we get to hear Toni Turner's story of learning to trade, despite odds stacked against her, and despite many cautions of trading being too risky.   Toni persevered, and has become a successful trader, author and educator! Toni is fun to talk to, has a delightful sense of humor, and a lot of wisdom and advice.   You'll learn from her: The four switchbacks, or stages a trader might go through What makes a good trader Why trading is more difficult than investing How she achieved the discipline, knowledge and experience needed to become a successful trader. Take a look at Toni's informative site here:   http://www.toniturner.com [amazon template=thumbnail&chan=default&asin=1593376863]

For this first podcast of 2014, I would like to introduce you to Dave Walton.    I found out about Dave by reading one of my favorite trading newsletters, the one by Van Tharp.  Mr. Tharp is a really interesting guy, he has many books and courses out, and he really helps traders get through all of their issues and become the amazing traders that they were meant to be. Dave is one of the guys who participated in Van Tharp's Super Trader program for the last two years to focus on trading psychology and his trading business development.  In this episode, Dave is going to tell us a bit about the Super Trader program, and how it changed his trading, and actually changed his live.  It's a very inspiring story. Dave is co-founder and partner of StatisTrade, a trading system evaluation consultancy for money managers and funds. The mission of StatisTrade is to provide clients with unique and critical insights into their trading systems to improve their performance and meet their specific goals using proprietary, statistically-sound tools and processes. Anyway, back to the newsletter.  I was reading the November issue of Van Tharp's newsletter, and one of the articles was by Dave.  The article was on back testing and bias, and it was one of the most interesting articles I'd ever read, and I think you are really going to enjoy our conversation about back testing your strategies.  Dave gives us some outstanding tips on how to avoid data mining bias and do better with back testing. Here are some links to the newsletter and to Van Tharp's web site: Van Tharp's web site Van Tharp's Newsletter with Dave Walton's article Van Tharp's Super Trader program Dave's StatisTrade web site   [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=007147871X]

In episode 21 of the Trader Tech Talk podcast, Kathy Lien is our first guest in the "Women of Finance" series!  Welcome, Kathy! Kathy tells us about her journey in trading, how she got started, and how she was able to get a head start by working at JP Morgan. In this episode Kathy gives us some excellent advice, especially for women just starting out in trading: How you can become confident in yourself How you can demonstrate your value in a firm Why you should continue to hone your skills Why you should seek out other like-minded women in finance Kathy also talks about trading fundamentals versus technicals, and how you can use both to improve your trading. Resources The Little Book of Currency Trading Day Trading and Swing Trading in the Currency Market Millionaire Traders: How Everyday People are Beating Wall Street at its Own Game [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=0470377364] [amazon template=thumbnail&asin=047077035X]

In this week's podcast, we're doing a recap of the top tips from 11 trading experts.   Each interview is with a top author, trader or educator, and each interviews holds tips and information you can use to improve your trading systems, test more thoroughly, and achieve higher profits with your trading system.  You may have heard some of these interviews already, but go through the list and find the ones you haven't heard and give them a listen! http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/8   John Person discusses seasonality, pivot points and his new book Mastering the Stock Market. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/10  Howard Bandy discusses trading system validation, mean reversion systems, and his three books, Quantitative Trading Systems, Mean Reversion Trading Systems, and Modeling Trading System Performance. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/11  Chris Davison tells us about writing trading systems, and his "assisted trading" trading system. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/12 Ernie Chan talks about choosing a programming language, using Matlab, and living through the Flash Crash of 2010. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/13  Mike Bryant explains his amazing Builder program, as well as Market System Analyzer. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/14  Neal Gilbert tells us about Braving the Rapids, his book that explains his new trading system. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/15  Jake Bernstein talks about seasonality, divergence trading, and then gives away a complete trading system on the show. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/16  Ben VanVliet discusses the challenges of the trading firms, with traders, quants and programmers competing for attention; he also tells us about his new regulation initiatives. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/17  Ralph Vince explains position sizing, and how risk and position size are related; he provides detailed explanation of his formulas and provides some graphs to to along with it. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/18  Abe Cofnas explains both sentiment indicators and binary options, and then shows us how binary options are a great sentiment indicator. Abe's book is a great one to get on binary options. http://blog.tradertechtalk.com/19  Lee Leibfarth gives us the 4 metrics we should pay attention to when evaluating a strategy's backtest results. You can listen to each podcast right from the pages above.      

This week's podcast is an interview with Lee Leibfarth.  Lee is a programmer, author and educator, and co-owns PowerZone Trading with his business partner Jean Folger.  Lee has created some really amazing tools for traders, and has written many articles for the leading trading magazines, such as Futures Magazine, Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities, and Active Trader. Lee is both a consultant, doing projects for hire, as well as an entrepreneur writing tools and indicators that traders can purchase, so he’s a really good person to get to know. In this episode, you are going to learn The top 4 metrics you need to pay attention to when you're evaluating a strategy's performance How to approach coding a new strategy The 3 steps of testing a strategy How often to re-tune a strategy after it's been running Resources for Lee Leibfarth and PowerZone Trading The Power Zone Trading website: http://www.powerzonetrading.com The Bar Analyzer website: http://www.baranalyzer.com A collection of Lee and Jean's articles: http://www.powerzonetrading.com/market_education.html Lee and Jean's book Make Money Trading

This episode of the Trade Tech Talk podcast is an interview with Abe Cofnas. You might recognize Mr. Cofnas from "Futures Magazine" - he writes frequently for that magazine, and he has an article in the October 2013 issue titled "Looking at Forex through 5-minute prisms".  He also has several books out, on both binary options and sentiment indicators. Mr. Cofnas is the expert on Binary Options and also writes quite a bit about using sentiment to determine market direction. There are a couple surprises in this interview, and you’ll hear it – I was planning to discuss two topics with Mr. Cofnas: binary options, and sentiment indicators, and in the middle of the interview, I realize they are the same thing. It was such an interesting revelation. Before the interview, I had read through several of Mr. Cofnas’s articles on binary options, and I had a good idea of how they worked, but as soon as we had finished the interview, I immediately bought his book “Trading Binary Options: Strategies and Tactics”. It is really good, and if you are at all curious about this topic, and how you can use binary options to improve your trading, I would highly recommend it. In this episode, you’re going to learn: How binary options can be considered a sentiment indicator How you can use sentiment to improve your trading Why text mining of Facebook and Twitter for trading sentiment might not be such a good idea Where you can begin trading binary options Resources: Abe Cofnas's book: Trading Binary Options: Strategies and Tactics Abe Cofnas's book on sentiment: Sentiment Indicators - Renko, Price Break, Kagi, Point and Figure Abe Cofnas's article on 5-minute binary options: Looking at forex through five-minute prisms The Learn4x web site: http://www.learn4x.com/ The NADEX exchange, where you can trade binary options: http://www.nadex.com/ The Cantor Exchange, where you can trade the new fast binaries: http://www.cantorexchange.com/

This episode is an interview you will definitely want to hear!  There are a few names that are so well known in the finance industry that everyone has heard of them.  One of those names is Ralph Vince.   Mr. Vince has written dozens of definitive books for traders, books that master traders read over and over.  Mr. Vince’s books are deep and complex, they are geared for traders who have been trading a while, and they cover topics like The Handbook of Portfolio Mathematics, The Mathematics of Money Management, Risk Opportunity Analysis. Ralph Vince gives us a first-hand look—a preview—of his current research work, and how position sizing affects your profits in trading.  He describes equations and graphs which are displayed here. Ralph Vince is actually a programmer by trade, so we’ll get into some of the programming topics in this interview as well.  In this episode you’re going to learn a lot about the mathematics of position sizing, and how to calculate your optimal trade size, and you’ll learn Mr. Vince’s programming language of choice! Resources: Ralph Vince's web site: http://www.ralphvince.com/ Ralph Vince's book: The Mathematics of Money Management Ralph Vince's book: Risk-Opportunity Analysis Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes        

This episode is an interview with author and professor Ben Van Vliet.  Ben is a professor of Finance at the Stuart School of Business in the Illinois Institute of Technology.  He teaches courses in quantitative finance, C++ and .NET programming, and automated trading system design and development. Ben’s got some interesting things going on.  In addition to helping students figure out automated trading systems, he’s working on figuring out how to get the various factions of a hedge fund or capital management group to work together.  I learned a lot from Ben about how these organizations work, and some of the problems they face, with traders, programmers and quants all vying for influence in the business. Ben's going to let us know who would win between a trader, a programmer or a quant. See if you can figure out which one... Additionally, Ben is working on regulation!  Regulation is a bad word in the financial world, but Ben’s take on it is this: rather than have politicians craft misguided and uniformed legislation from the outside, why not have a set of industry standards that are created from the inside that actually address some of the problems in the finance world. Resources: Ben's website at IIT: http://stuart.iit.edu/about/faculty/benjamin_vanvliet.shtml Ben's book Quality Money Management Ben's Book Building Automated Trading Systems Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes   Amazon.com Widgets

If you’ve been trading any length of time, you’ll know the name Jake Bernstein.  Jake is a long time trader (since the late 1960’s), author, and educator, and a really great guy to talk with.  I am really excited to have Jake on the podcast today, he’s got some awesome stories, and was really generous with his knowledge and time. In fact, Jake is going to give you a trading system today!  On this podcast, Jake Bernstein gives us his favorite trading system, and spells out the details on what to look for and how to trade it.  How cool is that?  This wasn't planned, and I kind of sprung the question on him during the interview, and right then and there, Jake described in detail his trading system.  Serious take-away value there!  You are going to want to rewind and play this podcast again. Here's the 4 insights  Of course, #1 is the trading system that Jake gives us You’ll learn how you can use seasonality in your trading You’ll learn about the benefits and methods of using divergence trading You'll learn that Jake Bernstein is a really awesome guy My favorite part of this podcast, though, is the talk about history, how Jake "borrowed" a huge mainframe computer to do some, well, unconventional things back then, and how it helped him leap forward in trading. Resources: Jake Bernstein’s webinar coming up that discussing evaluating trading systems The Ultimate Day Trader book, by Jake Bernstein Jake Bernstein's amazing website (packed full of really good content!): http://www.trade-futures.com/ Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes Thanks, Jake!!!

In Episode 14 of the Trader Tech Talk podcast, I have Neal Gilbert here to talk to us about trading, and especially about his recently published book Braving the Rapids. In this episode, you'll learn How Neal and a colleague used a coin toss to learn about trading How the Braving the Rapids strategy uses Bollinger Bands to create a river What the definition of a Dry Candle is The name of the city where both Neal and I live! Resources for this podcast: Purchase Neal's Book Braving the Rapids: http://tfl365.com/press/ Neal Gilbert's commentary at FX360: http://www.fx360.com/commentary/neal/10616/nfp-prep-septaper-away.aspx Link to this podcast in iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/trader-tech-talk/id663583667 The Braving the Rapids book is an idea book for a beginning trader who is just starting to get into trading and needs a strategy to start with, or for an intermediate trader who would like to find an excellent strategy to try to automate in a programming language. Neal is a great person to talk with, and I know you will enjoy listening to him.  Enjoy the show!

Mike Bryant of Adaptrade software is the guest on episode of 13 of the Trader Tech Talk podcast.  Mike is produces two very amazing software packages, Builder and Market Systems Analyzer.  Builder actually creates trading systems that you can run right away, and Market System Analyzer is an amazing statistical tool that tells you a lot about your trading system's performance. I've talked about Builder previously on the blog, so take a look at that as well. In this episode, you will learn How genetic programming can generate trading strategies Which tool you can use to help you validate your trading system How Monte Carlo analysis can help your trading system development Find out if this is a good time to be a programmer in the financial sector Resources for this episode: Adaptrade Builder Market System Analyzer The Google Group for Builder Mike's Articles on Trading Systems and Development Subscribe to this podcast in iTunes here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/trader-tech-talk/id663583667  

In this episode of Trader Tech Talk, we welcome author, developer and hedge fund manager, Dr. Ernie Chan.  Dr. Chan is author of two excellent trading system development books, Algorithmic Trading and Quantitative Trading. Remember the Flash Crash of 2010, where the market dipped almost 1000 points in just a few minutes?  Imagine if you were running an investment firm or a hedge fund during that time.  What would you have done?  Well, Dr. Chan was running a hedge fund during that time, and even more interesting is that he was running an automated trading system at the time!  In this episode, you'll find out what he did (and what he didn't do) during those nail-biting minutes! You'll also learn some amazing things about trading system development: How traders can use mathematical tools, such as Matlab to create and validate their systems When to use a trading-specific programming language, versus when to use a general purpose programming language How to improve your programming skills to write even better trading software Resources for this episode: Dr. Chan's blog on Quantitative Trading The book: Quantitative Trading The book: Algorithmic Trading The Matlab software product page I think you'll learn a lot from Dr. Chan; show him your appreciation with a comment below, or by visiting his blog.  Enjoy!  

Today trader and system developer Chris Davison is with us on the podcast.  Chris is a lot of fun to listen to, and has some excellent advice for us as system developers.  Chris has a number of well-known profitable trading systems to his name, and today he shares some of his insights into how to write the perfect system. In this episode, you will learn: What made Chris stop trading How to simplify your system development Chris's new type of "Assisted Trading" system How to see if your broker is widening the spreads (and causing you to lose money!) Resources: http://www.molanis.com/ - Chris talks about a visual trading system tool for Metatrader that he has used The Wallabot - an automated trading system Chris developed with Rob Booker Chris's spreads indicator - this free indicator shows you your broker's spreads Trading the Box - Chris's new "visual-assist" trading system I know you will enjoy this episode!  I sure did.  Let Chris know you enjoyed the episode by leaving a comment in the show notes here.  

I have a fantastic interview in store for you today!  Today we have with us Dr. Howard Bandy.  I've you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know I am a huge fan of Dr. Bandy's work.   Dr. Bandy has written three very excellent trading system development books, and I am so honored that he was able to come on the show. In this episode, you will learn How to get through the difficulties in back testing How to validate your trading system and show statistically that it will continue working in the future What you are not supposed to code into your trading system Enjoy! Here are the resources for today's show: Howard Bandy's book Quantitative Trading Systems Howard Bandy's book Mean Reversion Trading Systems Howard Bandy's book Modeling Trading System Performance Dr. Bandy also provided a reading list of books for us, related to trading, system development, and mathematical modeling: Sam Savage, The Flaw of Averages. Why plans based on averages are often wrong. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  Where we can and cannot trust our intuitions. Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise.  Why so many predictions fail. Michael Mauboussin, The Success Equation.  Distinguishing between skill and luck. Leonard Mlodinow, The Drunkard’s Walk.  How randomness rules our lives. John Haigh, Taking Chances.  Using probability to help make decisions. Emanuel Derman, Models. Behaving. Badly.  How quantitative financial models have been used, and misused. Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, The Invisible Gorilla.  How our intuitions deceive us. I am sure you will really enjoy this episode!

In this episode, John discusses how to set your stop-loss using a variety of manual and automated techniques. In this episode you will learn about: A tool that will help you calculate your stop loss size based on risk An indicator designed to ...