OddBall Systems

 Free Introductory Chat

OddBall Systems comments below.  Read the Magazine Article.   I am really amazed at the performance and simplicity of your Oddball system.  Its performance is pretty incredible. P.K. Hi Mark,  I've been using oddball for almost 2 years with great success.   Thanks and thanks again for the oddball, A.M. Mark,  THANK YOU for OddBall. It is amazing. Regards, C.E. Mark,  Let me first say that I am very appreciative of your contributions.  As a relatively new trader,  I value your insights into the markets. Many thanks for your help, G.S. My main premise all along was that there is more to it than just PRICE.  The oddball system proves that...... F.C. I have been watching the oddball system. Nice piece of work! T.M. Mark,  I just took your Oddball system and put it up on the E-Mini.  These numbers definitely got my attention!!! Thanks, T.L The Odd ball system works with lots of stocks.  Why is beyond me.   L.P. Hi,  After examining the oddball system for some time now I want to congratulate for such an excellent approach and thank you for sharing. Best Regards, R.Y. Thank You,  Mark again for OddBall,  it gave me a whole new way to test in the equity market...Hope you do the follow-up in Active Mag... Regards, C.E. Thanks for your recent showing of your OddBall system.  As you probably know, it works. J.W. I want to thank you for Oddball. Its amazing how well it has been working. H.S. Thanks to Mark Brown for the oddball system and other gifts to the community. C.J. Mark Brown's OddBall system has been rather remarkable at predicting turns in the S&P futures. B.C. Oddball that MB disclosed is just the entrance to a world that is way more complex and powerful than classic price driven modeling. L.C. Do you really want everyone trading the same version of Oddball?  There are some incredible variations you might be able to develop yourself taking into consideration gap and trend filters.  In any case,  I am not taking MB's gift for granted - it's a beautiful thing. M.C. A system with good historical results will not work in reality unless it is based on exploiting a market characteristic.  If it doesn't,  it's nothing more that a mathematical oddity.  That is why Mark's Oddball has such power.  It exploits a market characteristic that markets,  once in motion,  continue in a direction until they overshoot and then they move back the other way. Regards, M.H. Dear Mark,  Would you please explain to everyone why you were kind enough to disclose/ disseminate anything at all about your oddball system.  It seems no matter what you do, the "free lunch bunch" can't get enough.  Thanks in advance. P.T. One of the best "public domain" systems I have seen and a lot better than many systems costing thousands of dollars. B.F. IMHO Mark can never be repaid sufficiently for his gift. J.Z. I recently came across your website and your "Oddball" system code and after testing it myself I want to thank you for sharing this idea with fellow traders.  This gives me some hope to keep looking for good solid trading ideas which I am having a hard time doing.. Have a good one, M.M. MB gave away a very nice system for free.  It's probably better than anything many people have ever seen.  It provides a great basis for learning and experimentation. G.F. A huge discussion has  recently token place on the internet regarding to a trading system named "Oddball".  This SP500 trading system was devised by Mark Brown and is one of the simplest system ever made that gives correct results on the S&P 500.  The idea was good in itself because it makes sense to use the advancing, or declining issues of a parallel or the same market to be more general in order to "predict" or better to filter out the market where the futures will be the vehicle used for real trading. P.O. OddBall makes a nice benchmark as it uses breadth as its only criteria. B.W. Oddball is an illustration that simple things "can" work and all complexity "may" bring you is a smoother equity curve. J.H. Dear Mark: My partner and I trade a basket of proprietary systems on the S&P e-mini.  We added three Oddball tweaks to our basket of systems and wanted to thank you personally for sharing your Oddball concept with the public. THANK YOU :-) J.M. I wanted to thank you for being so open with the Oddball System.  Certainly goes way beyond what I've ever seen from any TS developer..........u'r ok buddy!!!! D.N. Hi Mark,  The Oddball System is cool. Thanks, R.K. I'd also like to thank you sincerely for your generosity in making the fruits of your work on Oddball so readily available.  I've found it an eye opener which has helped me in many ways besides being a very fine system in its own right. Best regards,  L.S. A highly respected participant on one of the trading forums claimed the other day that he thought the Oddball trading system (www.oddballsystems.com) may be the best public domain trading system that he had seen.  Since some of my customers trade the Oddball trading system I thought this was an interesting claim.  But I won’t make claims about Oddball.  I know the results we are getting for our customers trading it,  but I don’t know the results the rest of the industry is achieving with it.  So any claims would paint only a partial picture.  One of the best things about the Oddball trading system is that it is fully disclosed.  The code is freely available;  the signals are available on a web site or by email,  or both. Thus,  Oddball can stand on its own merits or fall on its face.  Anyone can do his or her own due diligence,  testing (back or forward), track record and evaluation and comparison of Oddball. I like that that a lot. J.L. Hi Mark,  Thank you for sharing your Oddball system. P.K. Fantastic web site, I have learned so much.  Thanks for handing out the oddball code. J. R. I would like to express my gratitude to Mark for this great mailing-list and for OddBall, a marvelous gift for all of us! Best regards,  C.S. Hello Mr. Brown:  I recently came across your website and your "Oddball" system code and after testing it myself I want to thank you for sharing this idea with fellow traders.  This gives me some hope to keep looking for good solid trading ideas which I am having a hard time doing. Have a good one,  M.M.   If you would like to have a comment posted please send via email.

Workshop attendee's comments below.   Hello from Utah,  Thanks Alan and Mark for a job well done.  The presentation, class size and coverage of material were all informative and professionally handled.  I would certainly recommend anyone interested in futures,  options and computer generated trading strategies to attend this session.  This small,  limited size workshop gave each of us in the group personalized service,  even though the experience level of our group was varied.  Several strategies were presented that would consume more time than I have available and I doubt could be found,  even with unlimited research.  Your expertise and experience presenting these trading strategies is appreciated.   Thanks again Mark,  D.T. Alan,  I thought the workshop was fantastic.  There are so many shysters in this business pedalling garbage that it is a refreshing change to have the opportunity to learn from a legitimate world class trader like Mark.  The class size was actually smaller than I expected,  and I was surprised that Mark was so enthusiastic about teaching a class where he wasn't making all that much money.  Clearly it was about more than that for him.  It seemed to me that he had a genuine desire to help fledgling traders. Mark's teaching style was engaging and entertaining.  He accommodated all questions, no matter how basic.  I also appreciated the hospitality we were shown -- it was above and beyond what we paid for.  As for the content,  I feel that I learned almost as much from the class discussions as I did from the models that were presented.  That said, the models presented were solid ways to make some real money. All in all,  I'd say the workshop was a bargain,  and worth many times what we paid.  Thanks again! D.F. Thanks again, I really enjoyed and learned.  I hope the others did too.  I see your point about what this industry needs.  More educated traders means more business for everybody,  including the floor guys.  A broke trader helps no one. E.G. It was a great workshop,  and I am glad that I attended.  If somebody asked me about it,  I would say that most definitely,  you will learn something that you can use. R.B. In October I had the good fortune to be able to attend one of Mark Brown's "Shortcut to Discovery" workshops in Dallas. I had wanted to attend for some time...the price for the workshop that was listed on www.prosignals.com was $5000. I was amazed to see one day that the price had been temporarily slashed to $500, so I jumped at the chance. The workshop was set to begin at 08:30. The other attendees arrived -- there were only three of us - and I was happy to have the chance to meet one of the other attendees who was a person I've only previously corresponded with by e-mail. Mark and his son Alan arrived at 8:30. [Just a quick note: Mark is not what I think most people would expect. I think he has a little bit of a reputation on this list for being "rough around the edges," but honestly, he is one of the nicest guys I've met (as was Alan).] Mark began by giving us a little history of how he came to be a professional trader -- absolutely fascinating stuff. The core of the workshop was the revelation of a mechanical Bond model and a somewhat less mechanical options strategy. Mark's view is that it is difficult, if not impossible, for someone to buy a black box system and trade it without understanding the logic. So half the day was spent explaining the logic behind the mechanical bond model. The Bond Model: The model was developed using the Ned Davis Technalyzer, which is a piece of software that costs $100K/year to lease and has to be run on a cray supercomputer. The software sounded pretty sophisticated, however Mark's teaching style was clear and engaging, and the explanation of the model's logic was not beyond the understanding of anyone with some degree of  knowledge about technical analysis. The model was made to run on perpetual contracts (Mark included a big historical perpetual bond data file for testing) . I tested the model when I got home -- not one losing year going all the way back to '87. (please don't write me asking for the results, or the model) The Options Model: The remainder of the day was spent revealing a pretty good options strategy...although it isn't really mechanical, so it requires a bit of skill to implement. Still, the strategy was simple, and again, not beyond the comprehension of anyone with some degree of knowledge about technical analysis. The second day was spent reviewing and then briefly discussing a few Oddball variations, and some bet sizing techniques. Mark took all questions patiently, no matter how basic, without making anyone feel stupid. He wanted to make sure we all understood exactly what was being taught. I think I learned almost as much from the discussions we had as from the instructional part. You could tell there was genuine concern that we learned from the experience -- which brings me to another point: Mark was only collecting $1500 for the whole weekend workshop, so clearly he wasn't doing this for the money. I think he is at least partly motivated by a genuine desire to help fledgling traders. And with all the garbage for sale out there, and all the shysters in this business, it was a real privilege to have the opportunity to learn from a legitimate world class trader like Mark. One final note: I was surprised by the hospitality we were shown as well. We all went to a restaurant for dinner on Saturday night, and had a wonderful time. That was above and beyond what we paid for. All in all, it was a great experience. My recommendation? If you have the time, you should go. David Miscellaneous Comments   TraderWorld - Chicago. Trading Chicago Style: Insights and Strategies of Today’s Top Traders - Chicago, Ill. -  hosted by the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, November 13th, 1998 I have recently returned from the "Off the Floor Trading" CME seminar   in Chicago. For those who might be interested I am posting a short rundown on what went on . The event was headed by Neal Weintraub and primarily Neal acted as M.C. Speaking at the seminar were Jack Rhodes, a former floor trader who now trades the euro off the floor.  Jack Asplund is president of Optima  which provides daily technical info for bonds and other market.  A trial is available from their web site.  Thomas Stridsman is a system analyst for PMB.  He spoke on the appreciating the difference between predictability and probability when developing and analyzing systems.  Mark Kelsey is also with PMB but has been a floor trader on many exchanges over the years.  His part of the program was spent on recognizing and using time of day patterns in different markets.  The S&P and bonds primarily.   There was one other speaker in the morning whose first name was Tom but whose last name I can't come up with.  He used to be an arb trader but now trades systems  and manages money off the floor.  Up to this point I thought that the seminar had a good variety and that the speakers experience on and off the floor made it very worthwhile.  Some of the speakers had products but there was no hard sell from anyone at all. But this was all in the morning.  After lunch it was time for Mark Brown. Curiosity about this guy was what probably made me decide to attend. Also an appreciation for a lot of what he has contributed on this list.  Actually there was a free exchange of opinion in the morning with the other speakers so Mark had been heard from before.   He definitely has his opinions but was in all respects a gentleman.  Not at all the flame-thrower I had sometimes envisioned.  In fact I think he was a little nervous to begin with.  But not for long.  Saturday afternoon he talked about his background as a researcher,  trading methods, daytrading verses position trading, frequency of trades , personal objectives and psychological aspects.  This was basic but informative and was interspersed with his own personal view on things and personal experiences to illustrate points.   Then  he got into some code and some equity curves for a couple of systems and some indicators.  I believe he has traded one of the systems system since 86. The next day about seven(?) of the 20 or so attendees  met with Neal and Mark at the East Bank Club for breakfast and another session with Mark.  The group was varied. One guy manages a hedge fund.  A couple  of the guys had only traded stocks.  After some more code and system talk and some more personal trading history,  Mark  spent time with each attendee and assessed what their goals were and what was needed to move toward that goal. That was Sunday.  Monday Neal arranged for those who wanted to visit the floor of the CBOT. That's it!  Both Neal and Mark have also said that they are available for follow-up to any of the  Sunday attendees. I always read Mark's stuff before but I have new appreciation for the experience and knowledge behind most of his posts.  I think he is genuinely interested in helping others to become successful traders and in learning what he can from others.  The whole experience was very positive. Neal set the whole thing up and was a great host but was pretty much on the sidelines (as much as Neal can be  I suspect).  He interjected a lot of his own witticism and wisdom and made sure everyone gained weight. But that was late and it was getting dark. That's it. That's the rundown and my personal opinion for what it's worth. If Neal and Mark do it again, I would recommend it. R.B. In all the books I have read about trading, I don't think I have ever read a truer statement than this from MB: "Maybe markets appear to have a directional bias.  But really they do not,  all markets are in a transition to surprising the person who thinks he has the direction figured out." D.C.   If you would like to have a comment posted please send via email.