October 2003 Newsletter

In this issue:

I. We need your help again

II. Oktoberfest ending soon

III. Opinion of Steve Ward, CEO

IV. How to set optimization ranges in NeuroShell Trader Pro

V. Thanksgiving Holiday closures

VI. Reporting errors

VII. Make sure you continue to get the news

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I. We need your help again

Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine is once again conducting the annual Readers’ Choice Awards. Last year, readers chose the NeuroShell Trader Professional as the winner in the Artificial Intelligence Software category. We want to see that happen again and we need your help.

Get your copy of Stocks & Commodities magazine and visit www.Traders.com. Look in the upper left hand corner of the web site for the 2004 Readers’ Choice Awards and click on the Vote Now! link.

On the page that is displayed enter your subscriber ID from your magazine address label (look at their example to see which numbers on the label are the subscriber ID). After you are logged in, look at page 2 of the ballot for the Standalone Analytical Software, $500 and more category. Be sure to mark you ballot for NeuroShell Trader (Ward Systems Group Inc.) Do the same on page 3 of the ballot for the Artificial Intelligence Software (Expert, Neural) category. Look for NeuroShell Trader Professional. Be sure to vote before December 31, 2003. In fact, please do it now so you don’t forget.

We appreciate your vote! As Steve Ward mentioned in his opinion piece in this newsletter, we need new buyers to keep supporting the investment you have made in our software. Many prospective buyers rely on the TASC results for their buying decision.

The winners will be announced in the 2004 Stocks & Commodities Bonus Issue that is mailed to subscribers in February 2004.

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II. Oktoberfest ending soon

This is the final week of our Oktoberfest sale. The sale this week is an across the board 15% discount from list prices of any of our software, including upgrades. We won’t have another sale for a while, so stock up now on software you need.

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III. Opinions of Steve Ward, CEO

Item 1. I just upgraded my operating system to Windows XP from 98 and I’m more impressed than I thought I’d be. I already knew XP had a host of nice new features because I have it on my new laptop, but I just couldn’t bring myself to switch over my desktop computer. Like a lot of people, I was afraid of the work involved and of losing valuable old data, especially after others here at WSG strongly recommended that I totally reformat my hard disk in the process (you know, get rid of all the old operating systems junk that had piled up over the years).Plus I was comfortable in those old shoes, so to speak. But I knew I had to do it, because we no longer support Windows 98 with NeuroShell DayTrader, and it wouldn’t do for the CEO to keep 98.

Well, I first backed up everything I could find on my computer. Then I deactivated my copy of NeuroShell DayTrader, which you must do if you plan to reformat. The next step was painful, but I did it quickly – completely reformatted my hard drive. XP was easy to install, and it has an activation process a lot like we have with NeuroShell Trader. I used the NTFS disk format.

The end result is that a lot of nasty little problems with NeuroShell went away, and everything, including NeuroShell, runs much faster. I no longer have time to grab a cup of coffee while I wait for it to come up in the morning.

For years we have been encouraging our old NeuroShell 2 users to upgrade to the AI Trilogy, or at minimum to upgrade to release 4.0 of NeuroShell 2. With respect to Microsoft products, I should have practiced what I preached. I should have realized that just as we have made our products better and easier over the years, that so has Microsoft, and that new versions are not only usually worth the money, but don’t present the type of learning curve we fear.

Item 2. Not long ago I rode the subway to Washington. Just after I got off the train there was a Metro transit policeman asking passengers not to give away their day passes to another rider. That reminded me to ask you not to give away our software to other people. We don’t stay in business because you purchased something from us three years ago. We’re still here because new people keep buying our software. If you want us to be here to support your investment, don’t give our software away. Far better to recommend our software for purchase!

Item 3. Here’s something I hear a lot from our customers who have TradeStation as well as the NeuroShell Trader: “I’m not a programmer, so I won’t be able to use PowerBasic to code my own indicators for NeuroShell.” So then I usually ask, “Do you know Easy Language?”, to which the response is often “Sure, I’m pretty good with it!”. Guess what – you are already a programmer whether you know it or not! Easy Language is programming, and I don’t think PowerBasic is too much harder.

Thanks for listening.

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IV. How to set optimization ranges in NeuroShell Trader Pro

We are about to tell you about one of the most important features of NeuroShell Trader Professional, yet one of the most overlooked – even we overlooked it in our new release 4.0 training videos, although it was there for years in the earlier ones. It is the tiny little plus sign (+) that appears just to the left of a rule or indicator if you have chosen optimization. If you left click on that plus sign a dialog box will open up showing you all of the parameters that will be optimized. For each parameter you’ll see the range of values that the optimizer will search in. For example, if you have set the lookback period of an indicator to 5, you’ll probably see the default search range is 1 to 10. You may think 5 to 30 is a better range, and if so, you can change it before optimization.

Ok, maybe you knew that. We bet you didn’t know that the time series parameters can also have ranges! Yes, most of these default to the close, but you can include open, high, and low in the “range” as well. You can even include indicators already on your chart, or other instrument data! So for example, if you have a rule like RSI(Close,10) >50, you can not only vary the 10 and the 50, but you can let the optimizer find something else to apply the RSI to besides the close.

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V. Thanksgiving Holiday closures

November 27th is Thanksgiving here in the USA, so we’ll be closed that day. However, like most companies, we’ll be giving our employees November 28 off as well. Please note that so you don’t get frustrated trying to reach us those days.

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VI. Reporting errors

We’re happy to help our users solve problems they encounter in our software, but our users can save valuable time getting the problem solved. Here is a typical email sequence we see a lot:

User email: I got an error when I tried to process my file. What’s going wrong?

Support reply email: Can you please be a little more specific about what the error said? Also, exactly what were you doing at the time? Please supply us with the serial number of the product you were using.

User reply: I just pushed the button at the bottom and the error that said invalid something.

Support reply email: …

We could go on, but you get the picture. It seems our users think our technical support is much better than we really are. Users think we must already know about the error they are seeing. Believe it or not, the majority of bugs/issues that we hear about from you have never been reported before. It will help us help you quickly if you provide as much detail as possible the first time, including any data files you were using. NeuroShell Trader even has a facility so you can email your chart with data included. But don’t just email the chart, either. Tell us exactly what we need to do to see the error.

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VII. Make sure you continue to get the news

We are still surprised that, several months after we sent out our June newsletter announcing release 4.0, users are still calling or emailing to ask when release 4.0 will be available. Seems they all changed their email addresses and never notified us of that. They could have been making money with the new features all of this time. There are many others, no doubt, who still don’t know about release 4.0.

After all these years we are also still getting tech support calls from NeuroShell 2 users who don’t know about the AI Trilogy and its components. So they’re stuck trying to impress their bosses with older technology.

Don’t be left behind – tell us when you change email addresses.

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