TradeStation Acquires the “Grail”

[Tams 20]

http://www.tradestation.com/aboutus/06152010.shtm

 

TradeStation Acquires the “Grail” Walk-Forward and Strategy Builder Technology

 

Acquisition Brings TradeStation’s Industry-Leading Strategy Trading Platform to a New Level, Further Raising the Bar against Competitors and Weaker Imitations

 

Plantation FL, June 17, 2010 – TradeStation today announced its acquisition of the Grail System “walk-forward” and “strategy builder” software technology and business from its inventor, Wouter Oosthuizen, and his company, Technovest (Pty) Limited. The products acquired include Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer, Grail Genetic Optimizer and Grail Computer Assisted Strategy Builder, together with all other products, enhancements and new features currently in development. These products will be seamlessly integrated with TradeStation’s award-winning, industry-leading trading strategy design, back-testing and automation platform. Both walk-forward testing and a broad strategy builder offering have been a company priority for TradeStation for some time, as the company has long realized that the potential value of its strategy design, back-testing and automation platform could rise dramatically with the addition of these tools to create and optimize back-tested trading strategies.

 

“The Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer should take TradeStation’s strategy back-testing functionality to a new threshold,” said John Bartleman, TradeStation Securities’ Vice President of Product Management. “Once fully integrated and rolled-out as part of our TradeStation Version 9.0, a major-enhancement release that should be out before year-end, traders will have the ability to test the robustness of their strategies at a whole new level. The Grail’s unique model of ‘Walk Forward’ testing allows the trader to see how the strategy he has tested against a historical time period will perform against various unseen market data metrics and time segments within that back-tested time period. The Grail Walk Forward Optimizer performs this multi-dimensional analysis of the strategy and then concludes with a simple ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ based on the simulated performance results. In other words, if the strategy is going to have a better chance of success in real trading, it must first prove its robustness by passing these rigorous metrics analyses performed by the Grail.

 

“The Grail’s Strategy Builder,” Bartleman added, “will significantly help traders build new strategies from scratch without the need for custom EasyLanguage® programming. Using genetic algorithms, the trader will have the ability to scan through millions of strategy permutations in a relatively short period, identify those strategies he believes show potential, and then submit them to the Grail Walk-Forward Optimizer to test their robustness.”

 

“The Grail products all were developed principally with TradeStation users in mind,” said Mr. Oosthuizen. “TradeStation will be releasing some extremely powerful functionality in its upcoming Version 9.0 release which, in my opinion, not only will dramatically increase the Grail’s speed and value, but will take TradeStation to a rarefied position where the barrier of entry for a competitor seems insurmountable. Teaming up with TradeStation, and having the value of its impressive product development and user support resources and expertise, should take the Grail technology to a whole new level as well.”

 

Mr. Oosthuizen will be joining the company full-time at its Florida headquarters on October 1, under a three-year employment agreement, to help lead the efforts to enhance the technology and seamlessly integrate it with the TradeStation platform. The parties have already started working together to achieve these goals. The purchase was made by TradeStation Technologies, Inc., the trading software development subsidiary of TradeStation Group, Inc. (NASDAQ GS: TRAD) which develops and owns TradeStation’s proprietary software, technology and intellectual property.

 

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[UrmaBlume 10]

Wow.

 

TS 9 with millisecond time stamping, orders as smart objects, inside the bar testing for volume and tick bars plus this new gear and it becomes a virtual bot factory.

 

I have been in conversations with the development team and have been waiting for these updates for over a year.