Being a long time user of NeuroShell Trader Professional and having many of the Ward System add-ons, I find the Fuzzy Pattern Recognition Indicator works like a dream. I am always looking for “Triggers”, indicators that can be used as a final signal to generate a buy or sell. These “Triggers” of mine must reduce unnecessary trades. I have found your Fuzzy Pattern Recognition Indicator to be the best “Trigger” so far. It easy to use in conjunction with all zillion indicators that are part of the Trader and I highly recommend this add-on.

I have four tips for users of Ward Systems new Fuzzy Pattern Recognition Indicator; hopefully you will find them useful:

1. When using the Fuzzy Indicator, in the “Time Series Search Space”, instead of the closing price I use the “Percent Change” (of the closing price) indicator.

Reason: The Fuzzy Indicator measures the actual move or combined moves over a certain period of time. If youre using the closing price, and the price is 10 at the beginning of the period and 12 at the end of the period, then the actual move the Fuzzy Indicator uses is 2. What if the price at the beginning of the data stream is 1.00 and at the end of the data stream is 100.00. If the Fuzzy Indicator is using an actual move of 2, let’s say, this move would be 200% based on the early price of 1.00, but at the later price of 100.00, an actual move of 2 is only 2%. Using the “Percent Change” Indicator will normalize the data.

2. I use the Fuzzy Indicator as a “Trigger”, a final signal to generate a buy or sell.

Reason: I am always looking for ways to reduce unnecessary trades. Try this: set up a trading strategy on Intel. Use “Crossover & Breakout Identification”: “Price > Simple MovAvg” and “Price < Simple MovAvg". Set up the trader to go long only. Be sure to open up the "Avg Period Search Space" to "3 to 30". Optimize the moving averages. Lock the "Avg Period Search Space" values so that the Optimizer does not reoptimize the Moving Average. Now add a Fuzzy Indicator. Set it up as in tip one, using "Percent Change", and reoptimize. Hopefully, it reduced the total number of trades and gave you a little better return. 3. I "nest" the Fuzzy Indicator. Reason: To reduce trades and increase return. Do all the above. Now lock all the parameters of the Fuzzy indictors (i.e., fix the min=the max), so that they do NOT reoptimize. The Moving Averages and now the Fuzzy Indictors are locked. Add one more Fuzzy Indicator, but change the "Segment Size Search Space" to "5 to 15". See what happens. It may help; it may not. 4. Fine tune the Optimizer. Reason: a long explanation of the Optimizer is best left to the Traders help screens, but it is possible to improve the return by allowing one of more of the parameters to reoptimize, while leaving other parameters locked. The parameters I moved around are: "B Search Space" (0 to 1) and "Segment size Search Space" (20 to 40). Give this a try you may be surprised at what happens. Good Luck Mark Behrendsen