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The
LiveWire Trader™ Is a Dream Machine
Imagine for
one moment what the ultimate financial analysis dream machine
should have:
- It should
have the legendary speed, reliability, and accuracy of the original
LiveWire Professional™.
- It should
be a fully integrated system with alarms, graphics, and portfolio
management like the LiveWire Professional™.
- You should
be able to ask it any question and get the answer instantly.
- It should
have new, proprietary analysis tools that give meaningful indicators
of buy and sell activity.
- You should
be able to develop trading strategies and test them in real-time.
After they are tested, they should be easy to use for day-to-day
trading.
- You should
be able to develop custom alarms on virtually any condition.
The alarms should be evaluated tick-by-tick on the entire market.
- You should
be able to share your trading strategies with friends as well
as with the best traders in the country.
This dream
is realized in the LiveWire Trader™. By creating your own
custom trading strategy, you can tap into the thousands of trading
opportunities that occur each day. LiveWire Trader™ has enough
power for you to create your own custom money-making machine!
The
LiveWire Trader™
Is the Most Advanced Market Analysis Tool Ever Created
We are confident
to make this bold statement because we have seen the competition
and we have blown it away. Trade Station can't do this, Windows
on Wall Street can't do this, Ensign can't do this, MetaStock
can't do this. There are no Windows programs that can track custom
alarms real-time, tick-by-tick, on the entire market. LiveWire
Trader™ easily runs 100 times faster than any Windows program.
One hundred times faster is the difference between the speed of
an F-15 fighter jet and a paper airplane, or the difference between
the fastest Pentium computer today and an IBM 286 in 1986. One
hundred times faster translates into a 10-year technological advantage.
The state-of-the-art LiveWire Trader™ is quickly becoming
the tool of choice for professionals who depend on speed, accuracy,
and reliability in order to maintain their competitive edge.
The
LiveWire Trader™ Is Only For Professionals
If you are
a professional trader and are looking for the highest level of
performance, we invite you to look at the new LiveWire Trader™.
We will be happy to talk with you to help you determine whether
this technology is the best tool for your needs. One rule of thumb
is that LiveWire Trader™ should pay for itself within one
or two weeks of trading. If you feel that this is unlikely, then
we would probably advise you to stay with the original LiveWire
Professional™ system. Also, if you will be using a delayed
data-feed service, then LiveWire Trader™ will not benefit
you. Our customer support representatives have many years of experience
helping traders determine which LiveWire™ program will maximize
their trading performance. If you are seriously interested, we
will be happy to send you a LiveWire Trader™ Manual, free
of charge, for your review.
Why
Professional Traders Prefer DOS Over Windows
In a world
where personal computers are dominated by Windows, there are still
a few tasks where Windows may not be the best choice in operating
systems.
In the serious
field of high speed financial trading, making the wrong computer
choice means losing money - sometimes a lot of money. The cost
of the computer, operating system, and software is insignificant
compared to the gain or loss in a single minute of trading.
Careful analysis
of speed, reliability and accuracy has lead many professional
traders to choose other operating systems over Windows.
Speed of
operation is one primary consideration for the real-time trader.
Traders will test data-feeds meticulously to determine which is
fastest. As little as a two-second delay in a quote can render
the data-feed useless for some trading strategies.
Every component
of personal computers is tested to squeeze out the last drop of
performance. Pentium computers, with only 20% improvement in performance,
are typically twice as expensive.
Yet most
traders don't test their software with the same rigor. The speed
of the operating system and software can vary by as much as 10,000%.
This means that all the best efforts in choosing the data-feed
and computer can easily be defeated by slow software.
The Windows
operating system is a multi-tasking, graphical user interface,
designed to appear easy to use in an effort to sell more computers
to the nontechnical public. When Windows was first released, it
met with poor acceptance because it was too slow to perform simple
tasks on the fastest 286 computers of the day. It wasn't until
the creation of the 486 computer that Windows became a viable
operating system to perform simple tasks like writing letters
and calculating spread sheets.
As the performance
of computers improved, the tasks of Windows grew to the point
where traders could successfully display real-time quotes on a
Windows computer. Windows could finally do the tasks that the
first IBM-XT computers did using DOS ten years before.
For many
people this may be enough. But if you are a professional trader
with a real-time data-feed, the situation is quite different.
The volume of data coming from your data-feed is 10,000 times
more than the average computer normally receives. Current high-speed
data-feeds require 115,000 Baud ports or even 10MB Ethernet connections
to deliver full-market real-time data to your computer. Windows,
even with the fastest Pentium II computer, cannot fully handle
this data flow. Instead, many high end Windows trading systems
separate the tasks into Clients and Servers running on separate
computers.
In contrast,
DOS, the last single task operating system, is at least ten times
faster than Windows in every phase of operation. The Windows slowdown
is due to overhead of the multi-tasking operating system and graphic
user interface. It takes a lot of computer power to draw pretty
pictures when all traders want are pretty numbers.
The computer
performance revolution of the 486 and Pentium processors was caused
by the introduction of Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC).
RISC computers proved the idea that a simple computer could run
many times faster and more reliably than the complex ones. The
same is true for the operating system. Windows is slow because
it is a complex operating system. DOS, on the other hand, is a
RISC operating system that can run at over 100 times the speed
of Windows.
The following
table displays typical performance results of real-time trading
software running under DOS and Windows. Notice that DOS software
is typically 100 times faster than Windows software. When measuring
performance, DOS is the clear winner.
| |
Windows
|
DOS
|
| OS Delay |
2 seconds
|
.001 second
|
| Symbols |
1000
|
150,000
|
| Formulas |
1000 per second
|
1,000,000 per second
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Reliability
Unlike the
average computer user, real-time traders have extraordinary reliability
requirements. When millions of dollars are at risk, just the thought
of a computer crash can distract your concentration, making it
impossible to trade successfully.
The reliability
of Windows is adequate for the average computer. The average computer
is used for only a few hours a week to type a letter, play a game,
or browse the Internet. Under these circumstances, Windows may
crash once a year. In contrast, real-time data-feed software runs
24 hours a day processing up to 10,000 characters per second.
The work performed by real-time software is more than 10,000 times
the work of the average computer. This requires virtually perfect
reliability.
It is our
opinion that the Windows operating system does not have the reliability
needed for real-time trading. This is because there are millions
of possible conflicting configurations. The lack of reliability
in Windows is the reason for the backlog on Windows customer support
help lines. Customer support for the personal computer industry
is at a crisis level. Free customer support is disappearing in
favor of "you pay for our mistakes" policies.
The safest
solution for real-time traders is to use the most reliable operating
system during market hours. DOS is a small, single tasking operating
system that ranks among the most reliable operating systems available
for personal computers. DOS is universally available and easy
to use. The following table compares Windows large size, numerous
drivers, and lack of reliability to the small size, few drivers,
and excellent reliability of DOS.
| |
DOS
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Windows
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| OS Size |
100k
|
25 megabytes
|
| Drivers |
2
|
100s
|
| Reliability |
Excellent
|
Poor
|
Accuracy
Windows has
two basic accuracy problems when running trading software. The
first problem is that the speed of serial data from the data-feeds
may be too fast for Windows, resulting in data being dropped or
errors in prices. The second problem is that, when plotting charts,
Windows takes control of where each point is plotted. This makes
it difficult to plot accurate fine line bar charts.
In the last
five years the volume of trades that occur on the American financial
markets has more than doubled. To transmit this data real-time,
each one of the data-feeds has upgraded their networks. Currently,
56 KBaud is the minimum needed to transmit all market data in
real-time. We have not seen any Windows software on a Pentium-class
PC that can handle 56 KBaud data without dropping ticks. In contrast,
LiveWire in DOS can handle 115 KBaud data on a 33MHz 486 because
LiveWire is up to 100 times faster than Windows software.
Many Windows
trading software packages have serious inaccuracies in their chart
displays because they lump bars together on the screen. This is
because Windows controls the placement of each point on the chart.
LiveWire displays exact values because it is in DOS and uses an
absolute pixel method for drawing charts. This means that each
bar is drawn accurately and distinctly, with maximum resolution
of one bar to one pixel.
LiveWire
Trader™ Uses
The Extra Speed of DOS For Advanced Analysis
LiveWire Trader™
is an enhanced version of the original LiveWire Professional™
that utilizes the extra performance of DOS to execute a powerful
new set of real-time analysis tools. The following list describes
a few of the new features of LiveWire Trader™:
The
Real-Time Formula Engine
The heart
of the LiveWire Trader™ is the real-time formula engine.
Calculating custom formulas at over one million operations per
second, the real-time formula engine allows the LiveWire Trader™
to evaluate complex formulas over the entire market, tick by tick.
You can easily combine functions like Tick Rate, Bid-Ask Spread,
and Intra-day Stochastic into a custom equation. The custom equations
can be used to display information, filter the market, sort portfolios,
or create custom alarms.
Continuous
Filters
LiveWire Trader™
uses the real-time formula engine to filter the entire market
continuously in real-time. This means that you can write your
own custom formulas to pick a few good stocks out of the entire
market. The filter runs continuously and calculates tick by tick.
Continuous
Sorting
The same real-time
formula engine can be used to sort portfolios continuously in
real-time. This allows you to write complicated sort equations
on the results of the filter.
Custom
Alarms
Using the
real-time formula engine, you can create custom alarms that are
evaluated on every tick. When an alarm is triggered, five different
actions can be invoked.
Real-Time
Formula Testing
One of the
exciting new features of the LiveWire Trader™ is its use
of the alarms to develop a trading strategy. By writing custom
alarms, you can create buy, sell, short and cover strategies.
Then, the strategy can be run on live data. As buy, sell, short
and cover alarms occur, transactions are executed, the trade values
are accumulated, and profit and loss are measured. This allows
you to forward test your strategies on live data.
Custom
Display Screen
A new screen
has been added that allows you to display the numerical results
on any equation you want to create. This is a good way to verify
the results of your calculations. The colors of the custom display
information can be set to indicate buy, sell, short, and cover
alarms.
Tick
Information Window
The Tick Information
Window uses a unique and proprietary method to analyze Bid and
Ask pressures. As each tick occurs, it is determined if it is
a Bid tick or an Ask tick. The Bid and Ask tick volumes are accumulated,
giving an indication of buy and sell pressure. The Tick Information
Window organizes this information into a unique display of buy
and sell pressures at each price and for different trade sizes.
NASDAQ
Level II
LiveWire
Trader™ can display Nasdaq Level II information. The display
provides a lineup of the inside market maker bid and ask price
positions. The total inside market share volumes are also displayed.
Market maker data is updated dynamically as bid/ask positions
and prices are shifted. Nasdaq Level II information is currently
available through the S&P Comstock data-feed.
____________________________________________________
Proprietary
Analysis
One exclusive indicator in the LiveWire Trader™ measures
the overbought and oversold states of the market. By accumulating
the Bid and Ask activity for large, medium, SOES, and small trades,
it is possible to determine when a group reaches the end of their
buying or selling potential. The SOES group represents lot sizes
of 300 to 1000 shares. These are serious individual traders who
push the market up and down a few points all day long. They are
momentum traders who are blind to the overbought and oversold
conditions of their group.
The Large
block of over 10,000 shares represents institutional trading that
can seriously change the market. Scanning for large block trading
will tell you where the smart money is going for the longer term.
A powerful
trading technique is to catch situations where the SOES group
is going the opposite direction of the large block traders. When
this happens, the SOES group is usually wrong.
List
of Equation Fields
Following are a list of the values that can be used when creating
custom filter equations:
Last, Open, High, Low, Close, Volume. Bid, Ask, BidSize, AskSize,
TickSize, OpenInt, P/E, 52High, 52Low, HourHi, HourLo, HourOpen,
Minutes, DUpTicks, DDnTicks, DayTicks, DayUpVol, DayDnVol, DayMFlow,
HourVol, DayAskVol, DayBidVol, AskTickVol, BidTickVol, AskPull,
BidPull, TotPull, ShortOK, PDif, VDif, TmDif, UpTic, UpTvol
Sytem
Requirements
- Pentium
200 or faster processor
- 64 mb
of RAM
- 2 gigabytes
of hard disk space
- A real-time
datafeed from BMI, Signal, DTN or S&P Comstock via satellite,
cable or leased line.
Some
Happy Customers
"I
am working closely with two other traders. One has LiveWire
Trader™ also and the other has the Professional version.
ASND was discussed on 1/13 as a possible buy because of its
break-out that day. It looked good until I went to the ALT-I
screen (the Tick Information Window) and found that the bid
volume during the day exceeded the ask volume, so I nixed the
trade. The Trader told me not to buy."
"The
next day(1/14), I found MUEI in my Block Trade tracking portfolio,
which I watch closely during the first half-hour of the market.
It had fifteen block trades of over 10,000 shares or more (I
set my minimum block volume at 10,000 in my filter). I received
a confirmation on the ALT-I screen and made a buy at 10 1/16.
It hit 11 15/16 the next day."
"Had
we entered the trade for ASND we would be at a break even point.
By waiting for a better play, the Trader really worked for me."
- Sid Berger
"Just
a note to let you know how much I like the Trader. As you know,
I've been using the Trader for about three weeks now and have
really been impressed with the speed. Nothing that I've seen
is as fast as the Trader, but as you know, fast isn't everything.
But, using
the unique filtering ability of the Trader combined with the
lightning fast speed, I was able to catch CFON this morning
(5/13/98) on a breakout at 4 1/4.
Two hours
later I walked away with over $13,000 in my pocket. What a program!
Paid for itself in one trade. Keep up the good work. Thanks
13 thousand now and a million very shortly!"
- Kevin
G.
How
To Order LiveWire Trader™
LiveWire
Trader™ is available for license at $5,000 per seat, or
on a lease basis.
Contact
us to discuss how LiveWire Trader™ can enhance your trading
strategy.
Call
us at 805-646-0094, 9 a.m. - 4 p.m. PST.
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