Category Archives: Products

Update on the ExxonMobil Model

Posted on by
Reply

SNM-XOM-041008My Exxon Mobil neural net model went long on 3/24/08 and finally gave a SELL signal on 4/4/08. That move would’ve netted you over +3.5% (not incl fees and omissions). Subsequently, it gave another BUY signal on 4/7/08 and closed that position on the morning of 4/10/08 (SELL signal on 4/9/08) for a small gain.

Today its giving us another BUY signal to go long at the open today! I hope that my readers have downloaded the 14 day trail version of this software and are testing it out for themselves. Check out my videos on how to use this program and create your very own stock neural net models in minutes.

Compatibility Issues Between YALE 3.4 and RapidMiner 4.0

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve mentioned this before but there are some compatibility issues between YALE 3.4 and RapidMiner 4.0. You can’t load YALE 3.4 files into RapidMiner 4.0 directly and have it work correctly. As such, the downloads that are a part of my tutorials won’t work in RapidMiner unless you build them from scratch in RapidMiner.

My plan is to upload revised RapidMiner tutorial versions over the next few weeks, time permitting. I’m currently balance a massive work load and my time is gotten limited and I’m way behind on my new tutorials. Maybe if I have time at lunch today I’ll make some edits to the tutorials…

VIX Buy/Sell Signals For Option Traders

Posted on by
9

Ah, the almighty ^VIX, everyone’s favorite indicator and the one index that a lot of option traders watch with bated breath.  What if I were to tell you that you can use Stock Neuromaster to generate BUY/SELL signals for the ^VIX?  Would you be interested?

SNM-VIX-030808I’m sure that option traders and writers would be keenly interested if a^VIX neural net model generated a SELL signal for a new short position because it would mean volatility is expected to drop.  If it generated a BUY signal for a long position, then the option trader would expect volatility to increase! Don’t believe me?  Here’s the chart!

Another way to use this when trading options is to build a neural net model for a particular stock and then buy/sell call and put options against it!

Creating Buy/Sell Signals for Gold Futures

Posted on by
4

I wrote in my Stock Signal Reviews – Boeing and The S&P500 post yesterday that you can use Stock Neuromaster to create buy and sell signals for Futures data as well. If you can download your quote data into a CSV format (or at least transform it to CSV), then you can import that data into the program, build a neural net model, and generate buy and sell signals. The only downside is that you have update the model manually by downloading the next day’s, or week’s, data in CSV format.

snm-gold-030508.jpg

Here’s a snapshot of the Gold Continous Futures Contract model I built using one year of data through the close of 3/5/08. You can clearly see that the Gold model closed out the short position for 3/6/08′s open. Probably a wise move since Gold might move higher over the next few days.

snm-gold-030608.jpg

Next is a snapshot of the Gold model updated with 3/6/08 data loaded in from CSV formated data. You can see that it generated a BUY signal for the market open on 3/7/08. Unfortunately Gold closed down at $973.20 on 3/7/08 and you’d be sitting on small loss if you went long but the model issued a HOLD signal for Monday’s open so we’ll see what happens.

You can even load in Currency Futures data for all of us Forex traders out there! In fact, I just did that for AUDUSD currency data!

Tip: Read the help instructions on how to format the CSV data (especially for the date format) before you load it into Stock Neuromaster. If you don’t formate the CSV data correctly, it won’t load and you’ll stare a blank screen wondering what happened.

How High or Low Will the S&P500 Go?

Posted on by
Reply

I mentioned to my members in this past week’s Market Timing Report that I would run a Monte Carlo simulation on the S&P500 to see what are the potential upside and downside targets for the S&P500.

The Monte Carlo sim confirmed my suspcisions that the the 1310 to 1340 level was indeed an interim support area and the sim calculated it as 1337. The simulation did indicate a negative bias for the S&P500 for the short term so I’m still concerned that we might see a breech of that level before we turn higher.

SPX-022508

The short term upside targets were calculated as: 1383, then 1429, and then 1475. The short term downside targets were calculated as 1291, then 1245, and then 1199.

Now, these targets were simulated using a Gaussian distribution and we all know how that distribution breaks down in very volatile markets. The chances are that if we do see more downside action, it could be violent and my downside targets would be meaningless.

Buy or Sell iShares MSCI Brazil Index (EWZ)?

Posted on by
2

Just for fun and to test out the robustness of the Stock Neuromaster system, I’ve decided to create a small selective portfolio of stocks and ETFs, generate BUY and SELL signals, and follow along in this blog to see what happens. To kick this off, and in honor of Wallstrip’s new host Julie Alexandria, I’ve decided to add the Brazilian iShares ETF (EWZ) to the portfolio.

EWZ-012808Although this happened last week, the model issued BUY signal on the evening of 1/22/08, which was executed on 1/23/08 @ $66.11 (open) for EWZ and the current recommendation is to HOLD at today’s open (I previously wrote the wrong signals because I was looking at the wrong model, sorry.)

If you have any suggestions for which stocks or ETFs you’d like to see in this portfolio, leave me a comment with the symbol. To play around with Stock Neuromaster, you can get a 14 day free trail here.

Product Review: Stock NeuroMaster

Posted on by
39

About a week ago I stumbled across a neat little stock neural net program called, interestingly enough, Stock NeuroMaster. I downloaded it and played around with it during its 14 day trail evaluation and was surprised by how easy it is to use.

Although I’m a heavy duty RapidMiner modeler, and I build intricate custom neural net/genetic algorithm models, Stock NeuroMaster appeals to me for its simplicity and ease of use.

SNM-NasIf you don’t care about how neural nets work, don’t want to deal with the hassle of finding data and making predictions sets, and just want a system to generate BUY and SELL signals with a click of a button, this is the system for you.

The system, from what I’ve deduced, uses a standard backpropogation algorithm. It downloads OHLC closing data for your selected stock symbol, then applies a zigzag line to the peaks and valleys of the stock price (this is done to find profits and losses), generates training BUY/SELL signals, then trains the data for maximum profit, and then builds a model.

SNM-PerformanceOnce the model is built, you can update the data by downloading daily/weekly data and then create a prediction with a simple click of a button. The prediction will then automatically generate a BUY/SELL or HOLD signal for the next trading day open. The model will also keep a log of all generated BUY/SELL signals and give you some system statistics on how well the system is performing.

Pros

  1. Easy to use, no knowledge of neural net algorithms needed
  2. Clean GUI, easy to read clean charts
  3. System Performance, Profit and Loss statement, and Buy/Sell Signal summary
  4. Easy step by step model building and prediction sets
  5. Yahoo, Metastock, and CSV (format) data compatibility and updates
  6. Stop loss and trading strategy settings

Cons

  1. Only a few technical indicators
  2. No real time data feed or update, only end of the day data downloads
  3. No “R” position sizing

Bottom line: If you want a neural net program that will generate BUY and SELL signals for stocks, without knowing how the inside guts work, then this is the product for you. Download the Stock NeuroMaster free 14 day trial (zip file) and let me know what you think by leaving me a comment.

Why I use TraderXL Pro

Posted on by
4

Long time readers know that I use a few pieces of software on a regular basis to help me build financial models.  One these is TraderXL Pro, a sophisticated Excel Add-in suite, that I rely on extensively.

I primarily use the TraderXL Pro package to download my stock, futures, and currency data, apply technical analysis, run my stock models in real time, fool around with its classifier algorithms, and backtest my strategies. I like TraderXL a lot because I'm a heavy Excel user and develop many of algorithmic models in Excel before I load them into a neural net.  This little package allows me to do a helluva lot with downloaded stock data before I data mine for statistical relationships.

The TraderXL Pro package comes loaded with several Excel add-ins (I bought the whole bunch because it had a Neural Net and Classifier in it) and was surprised by how extensive its technical analysis library was.  This is an all-in-one investment solution for Microsoft Excel. It has 165 technical analysis functions, historical data downloads, real-time quotes, backtesting, neural network-based prediction and classification, and you can download free historical end-of-day stock data, indexes, mutual funds and futures, delayed and real time quotes for stocks, options, indexes and other securities for more than 50 markets worldwide.

The entire TraderXL suite comes with the following Add-ins:

  1. AnalyzerXL – A heavy duty technical analytic add-in. You can download data and attach all kinds of technical analysis functions to your price data. It comes with “expert functions” like Cutler RSI or simple ones like volatility calculations
  2. BulkquotesXL – This is my mainstay, I use this add-in to download all my stock, futures, and currency data. You can download price data and transform it in different tables, apply technical indicators on the fly, and even automatically generate charts. This is a very powerful data downloading add-in
  3. DownloaderXL – Similar to BulkquotesXL and it downloads stock data and generates a nice graph with volume. I very rarely use this one because it doesn’t give the flexibility as BulkquotesXL
  4. RTQuotesXL – this is a nice macro, it allows to download delayed (free) or real-time (fee-based) stock quotes from Yahoo or PCQuote. There is the ability to integrate other quote providers as well
  5. PredictorXL – This is a neural net add-in that has been redesigned and is REALLY easy to use and pretty powerful.  I really like the redevelopment work on this add-in. Very easy to setup and use.
  6. BacktestingXL – This is their backtesting and strategy macro and it works really well. The setup takes a bit of time but once its done, a simple click of the button will generate your returns.
  7. ClassifierXL – For ease of use, and decent results, this is one good little classifier algorithm. I’ve used this to segment the S&P500 index and identify similar groupings of data.
  8. OptionsXL – I never use this macro but I have downloaded put and call stock option data. I guess this would be handy if you were an option trader.
  9. PortfolioXL – A great add-in for keeping track of your positions.

Now you don't have to don't have to download TraderXL Pro and get the entire package, you can download smaller packages to suit your individual needs, for example:

The TraderXL Pro package comes with all the above listed macros (the best package)

The AnalyzerXL package comes with: AnalyzerXL, BulkQuotesXL, DownloaderXL, RTQuotesXL, and PortfolioXL, OptionsXL (second best package)

The DownloaderXL package comes with: DownloaderXL, RTQuotesXL, PortfolioXL, and OptionsXL.

The PredictorXL and ClassifierXL macros come packaged in the NeuroXL suite (good to have it you want to neural net model!)

 Note: These links, with the exception of the NeuroXL suite, will download the trail versions.  Just save them and test it out for 10 days for FREE.

I hope that this article has helped you understand why I like using TraderXL so much. I've been using this package almost daily since about 2004 and even used it to build my ETF Trend System in Excel. I hope you take advantage of the free trials to test it out and as always, if you have any questions, please leave me a comment.

In case you want to supercharge your 10 day free trial, check out my other posts on how to use the macros in TraderXL Pro:

  1. Using ClassifierXL to Find the Right Stock to Buy
  2. Using TraderXL Pro to Build an Algorithmic Trading System (ATS)
  3. Build an ETF Trend System in Excel
  4. Build an ETF Trend System in Excel – Part 2
  5. Using TraderXL Pro to Download Data for RapidMiner Modeling
  6. Calculating Historical Volatility
  7. Calling ATR and A Stop Loss In TraderXL Pro