I’ve been using TSL for a year and am very pleased with it. TSL is now an integral part of my CTA business and has helped me manage the significant task of quickly designing and deploying trading systems during a time of rapid changes in the futures markets. Instead of taking on the associated risks of hiring additional staff, and hoping that they can actually create robust systems, I was able to quickly and affordably employ TSL to address the current and future development needs of my trading business. What follows is a summary of why I chose TSL and how I use it in my business.

I have spent many years developing trading systems using my own methods and understand the time and effort required to create and maintain robust systems. Done properly, it is not a trivial process even in the best of times with relatively “cooperative” markets. At the time I was evaluating TSL, I was in the process of deciding how to best adjust to the rapidly changing futures market environment. Whatever the potential solution being evaluated, the three questions to be answered were: 1) What will be the quality of the systems (robustness over time), 2) how long will it take to develop and deploy, and 3) what will be the total cost for the life of the solution.

I explored a number of options and products but ultimately I chose to license TSL for the following reasons: 1) Robustness / Quality of output — Based on live demos and other data, TSL appeared to truly be able to create robust systems on many markets, using various styles and time-frames that hold up over time. Without output of robust systems, you’ve got nothing! (See Mike’s systems tracked by Futures Truth and other user comments.)

2) Time required to develop and deploy systems — It appeared from the TSL videos and live demos that I would be able to develop and deploy systems at a very rapid rate relative to my typical manual methods. Somewhere between a few minutes and a few days. And as a key part of that process, if a market seems like it’s tough to trade, you can abandon your effort sooner and move on to other opportunities… System development is an iterative process with many, many dead ends interspersed with some successes. The developer uses that experience to learn and decide what logic to keep or discard, and what to do next while designing system logic. TSL performs this process at an absolutely amazing speed. 3) Total cost over time — I concluded that TSL was likely to produce robust systems very quickly and that the cost over time was very reasonable. Computed as a monthly expense (license fee is actually lump-sum), I found the amortized cost to be in line with the costs of my other critical functions, such as trading platform and data fees, and managed account administration service (performance, accounting, reporting, etc.). One should consider that for essentially the price of a fully functional seat of CQG products you can have your own R&D department. Contemplate the costs and various risks of hiring one or more people to do the same work, and TSL looks like an incredible bargain. Further, it is a force multiplier in that it delivers what I need quickly in large quantities without using up huge amounts of my time. This leaves more time to operate and manage the rest of the CTA business.

There are a couple of other issues. As a long-time system developer, letting a machine build the logic felt uncomfortable and seemed like a large leap of faith. After all, I have thousands of hours of developing, testing and trading that created my skill sets and shaped my biases. How could I agree to let a machine take over the design function when I have invested so much time in developing my craft? The way forward for me was first to realize that any “secret sauce” elements that I have coded could be integrated into the building blocks or “DNA” that TSL uses. Secondly, as I studied how TSL functions, I realized that it’s system construction process was very similar to my manual process, except infinitely faster, unflinchingly systematic, and not constrained by the biases that I have built up over the years. It turns out that TSL is in effect more “open minded” to strategy innovation than I have been. An initially humbling, but ultimately liberating realization. My conclusion was that TSL makes me the supervisor of an almost unimaginably fast system developer, or a “Super Minion” as I like to call it. As I continue to use TSL, I realized that I still use my market knowledge and many of my system development decision skills in exploiting new markets, assessing TSL’s results and implementing the systems.

TSL is the trading system design and manufacturing facility for the trading system designer looking to make the leap into the future. After using TSL, I’m not nostalgic about the old manual process days.

Conclusion — Since I’ve been using TSL I’ve made significant positive changes to my trading systems and overall business. So far, the strategies have been making money during a variety of market conditions. Client account balances are up, and I have peace of mind that I can quickly and effectively address any market and trading system challenges that arise.