In this issue:
I. Editorial Comments from CEO Steve Ward
II. Thanksgiving holiday schedule
III. Science and business apps: reversing neural nets???
IV. NeuroShell Trader tip – Creating an indicator of two different symbols on the same chart page
V. Special Discount if you are a VIP
VI. Make sure you continue to get the news
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I. Editorial Comments from CEO Steve Ward
1. The voting isn’t over. We still need you to vote for us in the Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities magazine election. As I mentioned last month prospective buyers use these ratings to make their decisions. Our ability to keep bringing you great technical support and updates depends upon us continuing to make sales, so please vote now before you forget. Here’s how:
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 2005 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 for the Artificial Intelligence Software (Expert, Neural) category on page 3. Be sure to mark you ballot for NeuroShell Trader Professional (Ward Systems Group Inc.). While you are there you can also vote for our GeneHunter product as your second choice (after all GeneHunter is the optimizer in NeuroShell Trader Pro.)
Now please go to page 2 and look for the Standalone Analytical Software, $500 and more category. Look for NeuroShell Trader there and vote.
If you have any trouble voting, our technical support department will even help you with that!
2. I am quite impressed with John Ehlers’ book, Cybernetic Analysis. As you may know, John asked us to make his indicators available to NeuroShell users so that they could be efficiently optimized with our genetic algorithm. We programmed them, with lots of help from John. At first I didn’t use John’s indicators, feeling comfortable with some of the other addons I had a hand in designing and programming. Fortunately I was smart enough to listen to some of my customers who were saying good things about the book and the Cybernetic Analysis add-on. I was able to get out of the “not invented here” syndrome and open up my mind to some other techniques. Some of the indicators in this addon, even the simple Stochastic RSI, don’t even need optimization! I thank those users who took the time to prove that you can teach an old dog new tricks.
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II. Thanksgiving holiday schedule
November 25th is Thanksgiving in the USA, and the Ward Systems Group staff will be giving thanks like most other Americans. In fact, we will be thankful that we have such good customers! We also have good employees, so we’re giving them thanks with another day off on Friday the 26th. So please make your software purchases on Wednesday the 24th so you don’t have to wait four days until our office reopens!
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III. Science and business apps: reversing neural nets???
Some of you who are using artificial intelligence in science and business have wondered, “Can I feed desired answers into a neural net and get back the inputs that create those answers?” Well, yes and no. Yes, you can do what you want, but no, not in the way we just described it. We’ll examine the no part first.
Neural nets perform what is known in mathematics as “many to one mappings.” That is, many sets of dissimilar input patterns can produce the same output values. Any attempt to shove answers backwards through a neural net might produce some type of “average” input set, but it probably won’t be the one you’re looking for. (Our CEO is fond of saying it’s like trying to shove cow chips back through a cow to get grass!)
Now here’s the yes part. Obviously you could try combinations of inputs looking for those that produce the desired output. That would find lots of the right combinations, but it would be very time consuming – unless you own GeneHunter! Fire the net in an Excel spreadsheet and then let GeneHunter hone in on great inputs. You can even apply restrictions if you like (input 1 must be at least twice input 2, and input 3 must be over 100, etc.).
Guess what? This is why we built the AI Trilogy! The Trilogy is a deeply discounted packaging of all the components you’ll need, with examples. Get yours before your competition does.
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IV. NeuroShell Trader tip – using Other Instrument Data
One of the most frequent questions we get goes something like this: “I want to use the S&P 500 index to help me trade my equity issue(s). How can I do that? In fact the ability of NeuroShell to use anything (not just indexes) to help build models for anything (not just stocks) is one of the things that excited one famous trader when we demonstrated it to him a few years ago at a conference. Evidently, something this basic did not exist in much of the software available at that time.
It is really easy. Let’s suppose you have a chart into which you have loaded IBM. You’d like to use the S&P 500 index and maybe the Amex computer Technology index to help you build signals. It doesn’t matter whether you are building a neural net or a trading strategy, all you have to do is use the Insert menu to select “Other Instrument data”. Follow the menus to select the ticker symbols of the two indexes you want. Maybe you also want to use CSCO to help you with your IBM model – no problem, select that too. When you are done, all three will have been loaded in your chart.
Note that you don’t have to use just the raw data for the two indexes and IBM. You can apply indicators to those indexes, which you can then feed into your net or trading strategy. In fact we don’t recommend the raw data at all – much better to use something like the spread between IBM and your index, or the relative strength – the possibilities are endless.
Things don’t end there. If you like your IBM model, you can easily build one just like it for MSFT and AAPL. Just go to the Format menu and select Add/Remove chart pages. Click on MSFT and AAPL and you are ready to go. Those issues will be loaded, and the model for IBM will be built for the other stocks.
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V. Special Discount if you are a VIP
We’d like to reward our best customers, those who have spent over $4000 purchasing software, consulting, and classes from us. We’re going to call you one of our VIP customers. In addition, we’re going to give our VIP customers a special discount until the end of the year – you get a 25% discount off any of our products (including replacement CDs and upgrades) anytime you buy through Dec 31, 2004. Of course, we’ll have to verify that you really did spend enough to be a VIP, and you need to provide serial numbers of software to prove it. The $4000 spent does not have to be just this year, it is anytime since we started business in 1982! (However, the 25% is not in addition to any sale or other discount that may be in effect).
The VIP program will not end on December 31. We will in the future provide other discounts and benefits to VIPS only.
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VI. How to keep receiving this newsletter
It’s really simple: just tell us when your email address changes! If you like this newsletter, remember to call or email to tell us if you change your email address. Otherwise, you’ll stop hearing from us.
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