Yesterday I participated in a great day of trader education organized by Tom Busby and the folks at DTI and sponsored by optionsXpress.

My presentation discussed the best way to develop a theme about the market and test whether and how much profits can be made using our backtesting tool, The OddsMaker. It was a great discussion and it gave me personal satisfaction that I am finally able to put into practice advice that Dr. Brett Steenbarger gave me many months ago. Tomorrow I will start a small series on how I’m using The OddsMaker in this way.

Below are some of the questions (and my answers) the group asked during the show:

Q: [11:35] Zoo the new guy: If I already just opened an OXPS (optionsXpress) account may I use the discount?
A: You are referring to our special pricing subsidized by OXPS for new customers. If you recently opened your account there, you can also take advantage of the available discounts: http://www.optionsxpress.com/trade-ideas/index.aspx

Q: [11:35] tony ho: Does this system include training?
A: Everyone who subscribes to Trade-Ideas receives a one time training session with our Director of Education, Jamie Hodge, for one hour. To make the best of this hour we always suggest everyone first read the blog and watch our video product demonstrations here (there’s even videos specific to the optionsXpress platform): https://trade-ideas.54solutions.com/VideoHelp/Menu.html

Q: [11:36] Morgan @DTI: this can auto-trade a strategy in an OXPS account… correct?
A: Yes, thanks to our partnership you can auto-trade the strategies you develop in Trade-Ideas PRO and backtest with The OddsMaker.

Q: [11:37] Ian N: How fine-grained is your historical data – to the minute?
A: Our data includes all of the tick data for all the stocks on all of the exchanges. We maintain historical databases of this information and add to it every session. We then compare the historical averages for every stock’s behavior to the real-time activity of the stock during the market session. https://trade-ideas.54solutions.com/DOSA/

Q: [11:33] John Du: Does your scanner automatically make trades, or just advise about them?
A: The Robot is our application that automates the strategy that you create with Trade-Ideas PRO and backtest with The OddsMaker. Trade-Ideas PRO and The OddsMaker advise a trader on which strategies are performing well in the current market.

Q: [11:33] Mark Jo: where do you get the data feed for your program?
A: We receive all of our exchange data from an institutional vendor – a relationship we’ve maintained for the last 4 years.

Q: [11:24] John Du: Can you use the OddsMaker to optimize the scanner?
A: Yes you can! That will be the topic of tomorrow’s post

Q: [11:20] Steve Th: will it filter the futures market as well as cash?
A: At this time we cover equities and equity derivatives like ETFs, indices, etc. We do not cover the futures however at this time – nor do we cover Forex.

Q: [12:08] burt st: please dont take me as rude but — why do you mess with teaching this and why are you not rich enough from trading to mess we yahos like me ? thanks.
A: Trade-Ideas tools still promote independent thinking – it does not replace it. A trader still has to uncover what’s working in the market by modeling the different alerts, filters, and position management rules. The value comes in the ability to model any pattern and ask better questions of the tools – like: What happens if I hold this stock for an additional 10 minutes? What if I only trade the 1st 30 minutes of the market? Etc.

Thanks Again to DTI

Every day the Fed makes its regularly scheduled announcement on interest rates, Tom holds a free day of education on how to best trade futures, stocks, options, almost anything. His live trading sessions are the stuff of legend – he knows what he’s doing. I haven’t met someone who has seen him fall flat on his face. That’s evidence of keeping losses miniscule more than any evidence of possessing a silver bullet or holy grail.