Professional Stock Trading: System Design and Automation (Hardcover)

by Mark R. Conway (Author), Aaron N. Behle (Author) "In the movie Pi, Max Cohen is a brilliant number theorist trying to detect hidden order in the chaos of the stock market, an infinitely..." (more)
Key Phrases: float turnover, float channel line, pair trading system, Shares Next Bar, Mov Avg, Draw Entry Targets (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Learn the art and science of trading systems from professional speculators. The authors share powerful long and short trading strategies in TradeStation that span all time frames, including over one hundred annotated charts with commentary and rationale. The book contains a complete implementation of a professional trading platform, including dozens of TradeStation strategies, indicators, and functions -- with 64 pages of EasyLanguage code. Further, advanced trading techniques such as pair trading and float trading are explained. These systems are integrated into a fully automated framework for position sizing and trade management. Finally, follow the authors as they track their stock selections throughout the week in real time.

Professional Stock Trading is a practical blueprint for the entrepreneur who has the desire, ambition, and intensity to enter the trading business. In a scientific manner, a trader learns how to master the technical elements of the business and integrate them into a disciplined approach. The book ends with a full-scale implementation of a professional trading platform. Swing traders, day traders, and investors who aspire to a greater understanding of the stock market will welcome this book.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Acme Trader (July 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0971853649
• ISBN-13: 978-0971853645
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #311,523 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent sampling of Tradestation-based systems, December 17, 2003

By	Dennis Chang (Seal Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I like this book--even though I don't have TradeStation to actually try the source code out on. It's a great nuts-and-bolts look at the actual step-by-step coding of several different sample systems. I recommend this for any novice trading system developer using the TradeStation platform. For non-TradeStation owners, I don't particularly recommend it, as many of the useful tidbits found in the explanatory parts of the book are drawn from other famous trading books. Without TradeStation, most of the book is rendered useless. Still, I was able to make use of the book because I am a programmer and can convert the tons of provided source code into Wealth-Lab Developer or Amibroker's proprietary languages. And the sample systems gave me some great ideas on how I can improve my existing systems.

29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Does the automated trading work?, October 16, 2007

By	J. Sun "jj" (houston) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Massachusetts district court has sentenced former hedge fund manager Mark R. Conway to seven years in prison and three years of supervised release for defrauding investors out of $20 million.

The court also ordered Conway to pay a $1,300 fine and $20 million in restitution. On October 23, 2006, Conway pled guilty to 13 counts of wire and mail fraud in connection with his scam. According to the SEC, the District Attorney's office has taken $15 million from Conway's bank accounts to be returned to the roughly 50 investors who put money into his bogus Groundswell Partners and Groundswell Capital investments.

The Commission based a large portion of its case against Conway on a tape-recorded phone conversation with Conway's Groundswell partner, Aaron Behle. During the October 26, 2005 conversation, Conway admitted to Behle that he had used the fund to defraud investors from roughly 2000 or 2001 to October 2005.

Conway also admitted that he had taken a sizeable position in a stock and lost a large amount of the fund's money, and that he had changed his investment strategy without notifying investors. The original investment strategy was purportedly based on quantitative and mathematical algorithms that capitalized on daily price movements in order to earn incremental positive daily returns.

In the course of the taped conversation, Conway also told Behle that he concealed the huge losses incurred by the fund by altering financial statements, profit-and-loss spreadsheets, and account statements to investors, which falsely inflated the amount of assets in investors' accounts. Conway falsely told investors that the fund's assets were at roughly $43 million, when they were closer to $14 million.

Because Conway's salary was based partly on annual 1% commission of the amount of assets under his management, which he fraudulently overstated, he also overcharged investors for his advisory services, charged the complaint.

To keep the fraud going, Conway also created a fictitious auditor, complete with a made-up email account, for the purpose of creating fraudulent auditing reports for the fund, stated the complaint.

The day after his taped conversation, Conway phoned the Commission's Boston District Office. He told a staffer that he wished to turn himself into SEC Enforcement the next day for an unspecified fraud that he had committed. But according to the regulator, Conway failed to appear at the Boston District Office.

As for Groundswell Partners and Groundswell Capital LP, the Commission obtained default judgments against both entities on June 30, 2006. The company was also ordered to pay disgorgement and prejudgment interest totaling more than $21 million. The court permanently enjoined Groundswell Partners from further violations of the federal securities laws.

Conway's sentencing is the end of just one of several actions taken by the Commission related to hedge fund fraud this year.

In May, the U.S. District Court in Boston enforced an asset freeze on hedge fund Lydia Capital and its two owners. The SEC had charged the defendants with defrauding over 60 clients who had invested approximately $34 million in the fund. In that case, the Court froze over $13 million in assets.

Earlier this year, a Georgia District Court fined an Atlanta-based hedge fund manager $20 million for his part in a fraudulent offering that bilked over 500 investors, including some professional football players, out of close to $185 million. At the time, the former hedge fund manager was already in jail on 23 counts of money laundering and 24 counts of mail and securities fraud.

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The code is worth thousands, May 27, 2003

By	Nigel (London) - See all my reviews

I purchased this book several months ago and was initially overwhelmed by the code in the book, which is written in TradeStation's EasyLanguage. At its most basic level, the code consists of systems and indicators for finding traditional technical analysis patterns such as triple tops and pennants, but the book also presents some advanced concepts for combining and encoding these patterns on a chart, including a system using sentiment measures that is absolutely brilliant. The book contains many chart examples, but I would have been keen to see the specific parameters that were applied to each chart. You must be able to commit many hours experimenting with different combinations of input parameters and the so-called filters such as moving averages, volatility ratios, and other metrics. You cannot just plug the systems into your charts and expect stellar results for every symbol, as Conway & Behle explain in the first chapter; however, I think they present a good methodology for stock selection (I currently use RadarScreen to scan for trading candidates - you have to make sure all of the Acme indicators are enabled for RadarScreen). The chapters on pairs trading and float analysis were interesting because this content is rarely covered in other technical analysis books; however, I found the pairs trading difficult to backtest, so this system is probably the most subjective of all the systems. The authors present an intraday pairs system, but I would have been keen to see a daily system, so I'm trying to convert the code to do this. To summarise, this work has proven to be an extremely valuable book and put money in my pocket after much labour. I think some people will just give up if they think they can just plug a canned system into a chart, but this book proves there are many ways to skin a cat, and thus I highly recommend it.