There’s a great installment of StockTickr’s ‘One Question Interview’ series. Dave poses the following question to each interviewee:

Dr. Brett Steenbarger, of TraderFeed, provides a cogent, informed answer. What caught my attention was his last statement:

“The lesson since May is that the big picture does really matter. It’s important to track price and volume, but the patterns that work in one market environment can fail miserably when that environment changes.”

Markets are always changing from states of momentim, choppiness and areas in between. A one strategy fits all approach will not generate consistent winning trades. That got me thinking how relevant our close-to-beta-release tool, The Odds Maker, will be to traders in the challenging markets we are witnessing. This was my response (however I decided it was too coy of me to post, so I didn’t do it. Here’s what was on my mind)

Ah, if only a trader could test her current trading patterns against the current market environment and come up with a probability that the strategy she was using would produce a profitable signal – a win rate. The resulting knowledge would afford her the flexibility of changing tactics without paying for costly mistakes. It would inform her what trading styles are best suited to what the market’s currently doing.

If ESPN’s Poker tournaments can show probabilities of a player’s hand, then surely someone can do the same for a trader’s strategy.

This is the tool we intend to introduce in the coming months.