Point-and-Figure software

As Kermit Zieg and I wanted to be 100% in control of the outcomes of the charts, optimizations and simulations we decided to write our own software. As I use MatLab frequently I started to write some code in M-Language (www.mathworks.com). Then I added more and more refinements until the software suite was powerful enough to support trading and research. But of course, I never intended to create a commercial piece of software and therefore I'm investigating what can be done in this respect. As I'm often busy trading, I would have to use an engineer from my company to improve the user-friendliness of the package. The cost of this transformation should be carried by the third parties interested in using it.

The software is divided into several modules, which allow you to easily import data, run optimizations / simulations and create charts. There is also a module for intra-day charting. However, this module is still a 'work in progress' and can therefore not be distributed at this time. All in all the software contains 2,000 lines of M-Language.

Because we cover a large amount of charts, we have automated a lot and thus use a batch-process structure which uses text-files as input. The first file on each line includes the name of the security and some parameters like start-date and end-date. The additional files are the typical text-files with the security prices included, including date, open, high, low, close and volume.

The output are text-files consisting of the charts, or the results of the optimizations and simulations.

The daily data or data-files can be downloaded from many sources. We can recommend Yahoo for their reliability - especially for US stocks - and the fact that they are free of charge. Using a program like www.hquotes.com makes this task very easy. However, you have to be careful with splits, and with the European stocks you need sometimes to interpolate missing data.

Again, the point-and-figure software was programmed for our personal use, so it would be a bit difficult for somebody that does not know it in-depth to use it.

Anyone interested in the software can drop me line at h.a.weber@bluewin.ch.

For those with a burning desire and who are familiar with MatLab, I suggest that they send me an email, so that they can see a copy of the code, though it would require the signing of a copyright/confidentiality agreement.

Sincerely

Heinrich Weber