quote:
You have stated the data was created from between 1.3 to 6.5 years of data. Presumably it was built up with data up to a certain date. What date is the probability tables drawn up to?
At the time that you asked this question the database had last been rebuilt about 1.5 years ago. Subsequent to your questions we ran a DB rebuild and the data used in each symbol now has a minimum of 3 years (for the YM) and a maximum of 8.3 years (for the ES) of data in the generation of the probabilities.
The rebuild was partly out of curiosity to compare the then and now and using a visual inspection there is very little change in the probabilities which is what we would expect. We would not expect this type of probability to change over the course of the market.
The build that was run today used data through to the end of trading on 4 August 2006.
quote:
My question relates to whether the probability tables data base will be
updated as the latest data become available.
No, generally not. As mentioned above there does not appear to be any point to this. There might be some curiosity in running this type of DB generation across certain time frames (for example run the DB for each calendar year) or across different time segment sizes. (example: Use 10 or 30 minute segments instead of 15 minute segments.) Each custom DataBase build is $20 with every 5th build being free (i.e. 5 builds for $80)
quote:
Has any buyer of the DB actually used it in their actual trading with any success and whether there are any statistics/reports from actual users.
We have not had any report backs from buyers with results. We have found that so far all buyers wish to keep their success (or lack thereof) private.
quote:
I realised that the price charged for the tables is not high but I know that if any trader depended on the prediction for probabilities, the trading result could prove many times more costly than the price of the product itself.
Correct. The tables/DB is not a trading system. It helps re-enforce a strategy with extra probabilities and they are also used for research purposes. To generate the software and DataBase took hundreds of hours so the cost of the DataBase is negligible compared to how much time it would take to create this type of information.
quote:
I would be very much obliged if you could give me some indication on the practical experience of the tables qualitatively or quantitatively. I am fully aware that a probability is not guaranteed to be a reality.
Well one way to quantify the usefulness of the tables is to do a forward test. In other words, you generate tables from data ranging from say 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2004. You then take those probability results and look at how accurate they are at predicting the probability of highs and lows during the year 2005. Are the percentage of highs and lows that happen in 2005 the same as suggested from the tables that resulted in the previous study.
We have not done that but based on the above results of rebuilding the DB we expect that this is what the data would reveal. One exercise which we have not done is the one suggested above in the custom builds where specific time periods are used. For example, isolating a start and end date which is in a bull market and also doing the same for a bear market.
I hope that this answered your questions.