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About US
(and the "fine print")

!

MindFire Systems was created to provide commodity traders with high performance trading systems. Our approach is dramatically different from most of the other system vendors. As many of you know from first hand experience, there are some very shady characters out there selling systems. Some literally falsify their system performance statistics to try to con you into buying. We use a different approach...truth, accurate system testing and sufficient detail to allow you to make an intelligent, informed purchase decision.

Our Guarantee and the "Fine Print"

We guarantee that we have accurately represented each system's performance. We will refund your money if anything in our literature is not true. In 13 years of doing business no one has ever said we failed to accurately represent our system's performance. Neither MindFire Systems nor anyone else in the world can predict the future. Since no one can predict the future, it would be a lie for anyone to guarantee that their system will continue to be profitable. What we can say is that so far our systems have been profitable. And the actual historical performance statistics are accurately represented. We do not refund money under any circumstances except as noted above. One of the reasons we have this policy is the nature of our product. Basically we are selling a carefully researched and tested trading idea and the rules that go with the idea. If you buy a TV and get into some dispute for some valid reason, you can return the TV and probably get a refund. However, since we do not sell a black box system, you get to see the rules of the trading concept. Once the concept is in your brain, we have no way to remove it from your brain.



Inside MindFire Systems

Hello, I'm Randy Stuckey, the developer of MindFire Systems. I spent many years in the manufacturing world as an engineer, statistics trainer, manager and director. During my manufacturing career I was a plant Quality Engineer, then a Quality Manager, then a Division Level Manager, and eventually ended up at Corporate Headquarters as Corporate Quality Director. I had the opportunity to develop many process models and then improve the manufacturing processes for several top secret "stealth" programs.   This quality improvement and model creation background provided a solid base in Statistical Process Control and the Design of Experiments. These statistical tools have proven to be very useful in the development of trading systems.



NEW Trading System Development Tools
(The MindFire Systems 6 Step Process)

MindFire Systems is the first company to use the Taguchi Orthogonal Array Designed Experiment to understand and enhance the robustness of trading systems. To our knowledge we are the only ones using this new technique. When combined with 3 Dimension Surface Response graphing of key system parameters, very powerful system robustness is possible.

System Robustness is sometimes described as meaning that small changes in parameter values cause small changes in profits and drawdown. Poor systems are characterized by poor system robustness. A small change in parameter value causes drastic changes in profit or drawdown. This is important because a markets nature moves around. If a parameter works well at 50 but falls apart at 49 or 51, you are doomed. Why? Because sometimes the best value might be 45 or 55. What you want is a system where 30, 40 , 50 or even 60 works O.K. Then if the market changes its nature and you have chosen 50 for the parameter when it should have been 40...who cares.

Poor robustness is also a common characteristic of over-optimized or "Curve Fit" trading systems. They look good on the historical data that was used to over-optimize the system, but they fall apart in real life. All trading systems are optimized to some degree. The secret is to keep optimization to a minimum and make sure there are a minimal number of parameters in the system. Most systems have more parameters in them than even the developer realizes. I know one vendor who claims his system has only one parameter. It actually has 6 optimized parameters. We use several sound tools to make sure the optimization is minimal. One great test is to use one time period to develop and optimize the system. Then when everything is finalized, test the system on a time period which is has never seen during development. These 'Out of Sample" tests are very revealing. If the system falls apart in the new time period, it may be over-optimized. Or it just may be a lousy trading system.

Some system developers create systems by letting a computer test thousands of possibilities and then keep anything that looks good. Of course the most likely cause of the "looks good" is inadvertent over-optimization. We take a completely different approach. We start first with a concept...an idea of how some aspect of the commodity market behaves. Then we test that concept. Thus we have a reasonable idea of WHY the system works.

MindFire Systems actually uses a 6 Step Process to develop our high performance trading systems.
1.  Use Taguchi Orthogonal Array Designed Experiment to study inter-relationship of parameters and their effects.
2.  Minimize Optimized Parameters. None of our systems have an excessive number of parameters. And most parameter values are the same for all commodities.
3. Minimize Number of Optimization Tests. We did 30 optimization tests. If you do hundreds of tests, you risk the chance of inadvertently finding some magic bullet values which are just a mathematical equation of the old historical data used during test.
4. Reserve Part Of Data For Out Of Sample Tests. Over-optimized systems fall apart when tested in periods not used during their optimization. We carefully save some historical data for our out of sample test. Then when the system is finalized, we test it on the out of sample data. This is the real test because the system has never "seen" this data. All of our systems passed this out of sample test.
5.  Create 3 Dimensional Surface Response Graphs. Used to further visualize system parameter robustness.
6.  Real Time Performance Study. If the system survives these rigorous 5 steps (very few do), then we usually paper trade it for at least 6 months.

If it passes all 6 tests and has behaved similar to what we expected in our original concept, then we may have the only product MindFire Systems will market... a HIGH PERFORMANCE TRADING SYSTEM.



Honest, Accurate System Testing

To assure accurate back test results, MindFire Systems uses TradersStudio and Trade Station  software for testing. Further analysis is then done using some proprietary software. 



Futures Truth Real Time Monitoring

ALL of our trading systems are monitored for real time performance by Futures Truth, Co. They stand alone as the "Consumers Reports" of Commodity Trading Systems. They report on how hundreds of trading systems are really performing. Every two months they issue a report which allows you to compare various trading systems real time performance. I have noticed that the only system vendors who do NOT submit their system to Futures Truth are those who know their system does not perform...and they don't want you to know it!!! So-your first rule should be to make sure a system is routinely tracked by Futures Truth. If it isn't, drop the system like a hot potato. We have no financial relationship of any kind with Futures Truth. We mention them because truth in system performance is long overdue.


Easy To Trade

Trade Station code (and TradersStudio code for new Catscan 4 and Golden SX Plus) is available for all of our systems. The code is quite advanced. It adds the system into these charting packages. We have also set up several different brokerage companies to trade the system for you. If you desire, they can even generate the next day's orders for you and trade them with no extra work on your part. Thus there is no problem if you are out of town or on vacation or don't have a computer.

Risk Disclosure

All trading systems expose your money to risk. There will be losing trades . There will be times when there are a series of losing trades. In addition, the performance numbers are hypothetical. We use the most accurate test software (TradeStation & TradersStudio) available to provide more honest performance numbers than most of our competitors. But it is still a hypothetical test of reality. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has developed a useful paragraph which looks at a few of the different aspects of hypothetical testing. Following is that paragraph.

HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS HAVE MANY INHERENT LIMITATIONS, SOME OF WHICH ARE DESCRIBED BELOW. NO REPRESENTATION IS BEING MADE THAT ANY ACCOUNT WILL OR IS LIKELY TO ACHIEVE PROFITS OR LOSSES SIMILAR TO THOSE SHOWN. IN FACT, THERE ARE FREQUENTLY SHARP DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS AND THE ACTUAL RESULTS SUBSEQUENTLY ACHIEVED BY ANY PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM. ONE OF THE LIMITATIONS OF HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS IS THAT THEY ARE GENERALLY PREPARED WITH THE BENEFIT OF HINDSIGHT. IN ADDITION, HYPOTHETICAL TRADING DOES NOT INVOLVE FINANCIAL RISK AND NO HYPOTHETICAL TRADING RECORD CAN COMPLETELY ACCOUNT FOR THE IMPACT OF FINANCIAL RISK IN ACTUAL TRADING. FOR EXAMPLE, THE ABILITY TO WITHSTAND LOSSES OR TO ADHERE TO A PARTICULAR TRADING PROGRAM IN SPITE OF TRADING LOSSES ARE MATERIAL POINTS WHICH CAN ALSO ADVERSELY AFFECT ACTUAL TRADING RESULTS. THERE ARE NUMEROUS OTHER FACTORS RELATED TO THE MARKETS IN GENERAL OR TO THE IMPLEMENTATION OF ANY SPECIFIC TRADING PROGRAM WHICH CANNOT BE FULLY ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE PREPARATION OF HYPOTHETICAL PERFORMANCE RESULTS AND ALL OF WHICH CAN ADVERSELY AFFECT ACTUAL TRADING RESULTS.