Products

We provide subscriptions to portfolios of commodities trading systems.  Our auto-trade commodities broker then auto-trades the portfolio of systems for you.  Subscription is via credit card, with automatic monthly recurring billing.

Portfolio Descriptions (& Performance 2007-2009)
Portfolio Descriptions (& Performance 2010-2012)
 

Our portfolios focus primarily on:

1. Food (via corn, wheat, and soybeans)
2. Energy (via crude oil and natural gas)
3. Stock Index (via S&P 500, Midcap 400, and Russell 2000)
4. Precious Metals (via gold and silver)

We have solved the age old problem of whether to a) show hypothetical historical performance as it occurred over the passing of time, or b) show hypothetical historical performance all generated today using the portfolios as configured today and the trading systems as they exist today.  Portfolios and trading systems may at times be enhanced, and using approach ‘a’ does not reflect how those changes would have played out over the past.  Using approach ‘b’ does not show how performance has actually been over the past, i.e., it does not show ‘real time’ hypothetical historical performance.  Our solution – show both. 

(Before continuing, a note to those of you unfamiliar with ‘hypothetical’ performance:  Hypothetical performance is using all the trading instructions produced by the trading systems/portfolio, and adjusting those results with an allocation for price slippage and broker commissions.  Be careful when viewing hypothetical performance – not all system vendors use a reasonable allocation for slippage and commissions, and these factors, cumulative over time, are very important.  Why not simply show actual account performance instead of hypothetical performance?  Regulatory agencies strictly prohibit (will shut you down) showing performance of one account.  If one actual account is shown, all accounts must be shown.  That is impossible for system vendors, such as us, because system vendors do not have access to customer accounts.  And brokers, who do have access to customer accounts, also cannot show actual account performance for obvious practical reasons.  Some vendors/brokers do show single actual performance, but however good that performance might be, I personally would shy away from anyone that I know is willing to break the law.)

Hypothetical performance values shown on this page reflect the current configurations of portfolios and latest (if any) enhancement level of the component trading systems.  (This page may not always be totally up-to-date, as the changes we make are not usually that significant and other tasks may take priority over updating the details of this page.)  Go to the ‘Performance’ tab for this website to view ‘real time’ hypothetical performance, i.e., hypothetical performance as it occurred as time passed.

You will notice that, within the links at the top of this page, no performance values are shown for Dynamic Extra.  Nor is its performance added to the portfolios performance.  This is because you cannot go backward in time hypothetically and know what the discretionary trades, or their outcome, would have been.  You can only track them in ‘real time’.

The ‘Portfolio Descriptions’ links above take you to pages that at first glance look complicated.  But if you will read and follow the instructions at the top of those pages, you will find that much descriptive and comparative information is provided on a single page that would otherwise be difficult to assimilate via flipping among numerous pages.

Some people like to view Trade Station Strategy Performance Reports for the individual trading systems which comprise the portfolios.  These reports may be seen at: Trade Station Reports

We do not expect that all the markets or all the systems of a portfolio will trade all the time.  Each system has a low/high volatility shut off.  This shutoff is considered and reflected in portfolio configuration, historical performance, and subscription pricing.  These periods of no or low trading activity are also reflected in the calculations showing what percentage subscription fees are of net trading gain.  Note (on the Performance page) that subscription costs have historically been less than CTA performance fees would be.  So don’t feel you have to substitute something when components go thru shut off periods.  We provide our portfolios at ‘cut rate’ pricing (count the components) largely to accommodate periods when multiple markets and systems will go thru shut off periods, and also because some people may not wish to trade all the markets represented in the portfolios.  As you consider what your subscription is costing in relationship to trading performance, use at least 12 months as your time horizon, not just a month or few.  A few people have at some points in time remarked that they paid subscription for the month but did not make money.  I noticed that those same people did not send us extra subscription money for the previous months when they made big money.  We are not registered to charge customers based on last month performance.  But that is good for you – look at historical performance and observe that we generally would have been charging you more.

We do not permit ‘loading up’ any markets or systems via substitution of portfolio components. 

January 2012 Addition/Update:  Read, on the ‘Performance’ page, that we have made a change from rarely going to the sidelines or overriding trading signals to becoming more active in these activities.  This is because the markets are currently and recently (see Nov and Dec results) much out-of-character, and because danger is increased given the current Middle East risks and European Union risks.  One ramification of this change in mode of operation is that actual monthly performance will probably, at least for awhile, differ from simple take-every-trade hypothetical monthly performance.  We expect this will be a good thing in terms of risk adjusted return, and hopefully not negative in terms of absolute return.  We encourage eligible subscribers to take advantage of free ‘Dynamic Extra’ trades to provide diversification to subscribed portfolio trading.