The Jurik Research software suite of add-in modules received a Readers' Choice Award from Technical Analysis of Stocks and Commodities for the years 1997, 1998 and 2000. To what do you attribute this recognition?
Investors and traders are looking for powerful, reliable technical indicators that are reasonably priced. The Jurik line of indicators offers low-lag, extremely high quality signals and perform exactly as advertised. In addition, our customer and technical support are top quality. The staff are all perfectionists. For example, we offer rewards if a user can find any error in the user manuals. Discovered errors are immediately corrected and new manuals are printed the next day.
What inspired you to start Jurik Research?
After working for 11 years on military related signal processing, I decided to go commercial and offer my services to corporations. Over time, the tasks were increasingly focused on market analysis. So I created a suite of analysis tools that were pretty handy and marketed them as software add-ins to Microsoft Excel. A set of add-ins for SuperCharts and TradeStation soon followed. The rest is history.
To what do you attribute Jurik Research's success?
Painstaking attention to quality, bend-over-backwards customer and technical support, and very reasonable pricing. Because Jurik Research advertises in only one publication (TASC), we attribute half of all business growth to recommendations by our customers.
How do you feel traders can benefit from using your technical indicators?
The primary advantage is that Jurik indicators provide clearer signals with less delay (lag) than classical technical indicators. This promotes easier understanding of market behavior and quicker timing.
What lead you to develop your particular approach to markets?
Markets are getting increasingly volatile and noisy. I counteract this trend with techniques that focus on risk reduction, noise reduction, and lag reduction. Consequently, I prefer to trade a basket of mainstream companies within a clearly rising or falling sector. This approach is summarized by Wall Street Harvest, at http://www.wallstreetharvest.com/newsletter/000924/part2.shtml#04
Do you have any general suggestions for those who trade your indicators or any other indicators?
Move away from using classical indicators. The market has been discounted by thousands of novice traders relying on these antiquated formulas of analysis. To get an edge, be innovative and seek out top quality indicators. Read the latest books on market analysis. You may find only one good idea, but that may make all the difference.
Do you have any tips you would like to give to our TradeStationZone readers?
Here are some tips from a list of 31 that I published in the book "Computerized Trading":
Resist the temptation to purchase prebuilt trading systems. You are at its mercy.
Read many books on various aspects of trading. There's no point in reinventing the wheel.
Select software that permits you to test your own strategies. Backtesting does not guarantee winners, but it sure picks out losers.
Look for patterns that stack the odds in your favor. If you don't have an edge, don't trade.
If the trading style does not suit you psychologically, replace it.
Keep your strategy simple and test the crap out of it. Literally. Crappy rules will cost you.
An over-optimized back-tested system is almost surely useless.
It's better to capture half a trend with low risk than tops and bottoms with high risk.
Never assume your trades were executed. Always get confirmation.
Trade what you are willing to lose. Otherwise your risk analysis will be distorted.
Avoid overconfidence. After a few good trades, don't double up.
The market is always changing. Endeavor the keep ahead with better strategies.
Stay in top physical shape. You'll feel, think, trade and handle stress better.
Do you have any new projects in which our readers would be interested?
We plan to release a suite of tools for MetaStock users in 2002. We have several new indicators in R&D. Long-term projects include continued development of a "universal function neuron" for improved nonlinear modeling.
What keeps you busy besides algorithms and market research?
Trying to stay ahead of Microsoft's ever widening array of buggy operating systems. It's especially time consuming when our programming employs undocumented features in the O/S. We want code to be extremely reliable. That's all part of doing business.