SMB Systems

Create your own tools

As a discretionary trader, we can help you develop new tools that can help you break through to the next level of profitability by testing new ideas—or old ones—that should enhance your decision making. Along the way we will help you discover how much of your intuition can be enhanced with rules than can increase your confidence, maintain your risk/reward criteria while making bigger trades, and keep up with a faster and faster moving market. You can operate with stocks in play or you can continuously scan the entire market for stocks that fit the way you trade. Develop a personal radar screen or put signals on a chart—we will help you build a system that is best for you.


Maybe ready for a gray box

Maybe you are ready to codify your current trading intuition into a gray box that not only takes most of the emotion out of your trading day, but more importantly can significantly increase the number of trades—good trades—that you can make per day. More stocks. More profitable trades. More P&L. This approach will allow you to spend your time on the things that your computer can’t do while it spends its time finding opportunities for you, leaving the final execution decisions up to you. You can work from your personal radar screen or a prescreened list of stocks; but whichever choice you make, your system will tell you what it would do—but you decide.


Finally, a black box!

And finally the black box. Turn you ideas into potential money machines. They won’t all work, and the system design and testing can seem overwhelming at first, but once you have a working system, you can trade hundreds of stocks, ETF’s, indices, options, commodities, and FX pairs with multiple strategies. Trend following. Reversion to the mean. Statistical arbitrage. Combine fundamentals and technicals into multi factor trading systems. Add money management through stops and targets. The number of strategies is only limited by your imagination, and the right training to turn an idea into dollars


How do you get started?

SMB’s systems training isn’t about theory or academic studies -- it’s about one thing -- developing systems that fit your personality and make money. You will work side by side with an experienced trader who has spent fifteen years turning ideas into money making trading systems.

Currently we are focused on one-on-one or very small groups of traders—not to exceed four traders-- who can spend two weeks in New York City living, breathing, eating systems trading. The goal is for you to have a working—or almost working—system by the time you leave. And our follow up with you is unlimited for six months while you complete the systems design started in NYC, and to help you think about and test enhancements once you start to implement your new systems in real time. If your schedule does not allow you to come to New York City, we also offer remote training, please schedule a call to discuss this option.

To start down this path with us, you will need the following: Some basic programming skills. All our training is done using TradeStation’s EasyLanguage, so you don’t need to be a hard core c++ or MATLAB or R or Java or similar programmer, but you also can’t be a complete novice. You will need to familiarize yourself with EasyLanguage for at least one week before coming to New York. You will need an active TradeStation account. While we provide access to TradeStation, you must have your own account so you can go from idea to implementation to testing on your own.



In-House Training + 6 months
of unlimited email support
Remote Training + 6 months
of unlimited email support

Create your own tools

  • Break through to next level of profitability

  • Build a system that mirrors the way you trade

  • Develop a personal radar screen
Read more

Maybe ready for a Gray Box?

  • Take emotions out of your trading day

  • Trade more stocks - many more stocks

  • Spend your time on the things your computer can't do
Read more

And finally a black Box!

  • Turn you ideas into potential money machines

  • Trade hundreds of stocks

  • Only limited by your imagination

Read more

What will you learn?

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It starts with an ideaWe will teach you how to turn an idea into a set of rules—rules that you might already follow as a discretionary trader. Or a new idea that you have never traded before.

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It’s not just rules

We will teach you how to think about rules, what rules can work together, and what rules are a waste of time. We will help you jump start your development by keeping you from going down blind alleys based on our experience.

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Testing, testing, and more testing

The vast majority of the time in developing a gray box or black box is spent in testing. Not just one stock, or even a handful. Not just one time frame. Not just one set of market conditions. Not just one asset class. Either it works or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t we move on.

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It has to make money

All too many traders are saddled with the psychological burden of having to be right, or as we say, “they would rather be right than make money.” We will teach you the simple statistics that will predict whether your system will make money or not. And under what conditions. And how much.

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Silver bullet or silver shotgun pellets—both can work

We will teach you how to build a system that targets just a few—or even just one—asset. Maybe you just trade eMini’s or just a couple of FX pairs—we can teach you to build a system for that. Or maybe you would like to trade hundreds of stocks, spreading your risk over many, many open positions—we can teach you that as well.

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Every system has a sweet spot.

We will not only teach you how to find the sweet spot, but more importantly to build a system with a sweet spot that matches your trading psychology. No sense building a system that you will never use if it runs counter to your personal psychology.

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So you want to use leverage—maybe a lot of leverage

We will teach you how to think about leverage. And more importantly, about the risk of ruin.