My bad experience dealing with HomeTrader. Please read !

If you are a HomeTrader member or former member please read the following notice. If you are not a member and know someone who is a member then perhaps you could pass this on to him or her. If you are contemplating on forking out $6000 on doing a Home Trader course then this should be of interest to you as well. Some of this stuff was posted on Home Traders own members forum in response to the continual denigration of our software by Home Trader staff, but was quickly deleted from their forum which is why I have chosen to tell the whole story here without it being censored and interfered with because I don't believe that HomeTrader members know the whole story of my relationship with this company. It appears that it was alright for HomeTrader staff to bag our products on their own forum without telling the whole story of how Home Trader never actually paid me a single cent for all of the years they used our software for NOTHING whilst charging their members for every backtest that was run on it. Of course I don't think they want their members to know this salient point because otherwise why would they delete a post of mine which made this point in response to one of their staff members badgering me on the price of my software ?

As a small Australian software developer we rely on the sales of our products to fund research and development so that we can offer free upgrades to our registered users. We don’t charge for updates, as the price of the free updates is factored into the original price. Instead we use feedback from our users to improve our products and offer these improvements free to any registered users.

When I developed this product more than 9 years ago there was nothing like it around at the time. I did it off my own back with no shareholders or investors money. It was just my own time and expense in between other contracts I had at the time. I did not have access to a large pool of shareholders or investors money to play with and waste but I still persevered and realized that if this package was useful to myself then it would probably be useful to others. Suffice to say that it has been useful not only to myself but to many others who have purchased it from me over the years and who have provided valuable feedback to make the product what it is today. To those customers we value your loyalty and support.

Around 2002-2003 HomeTrader (owned by Capital Intelligence) approached us wanting to use our software to provide back testing service to their members. I agreed to this so long as there was reciprocal promotion in the form of a simple courtesy notice on each report or chart that was reproduced from TradeSim. I did not ask for royalties nor did I get anything in writing enforcing this agreement and naturally I assumed that dealing with a publically listed company this is all I would need. Home Trader agreed to this at the time whilst later requesting that we issue their staff each with a free license of TradeSim Enterprise.

At HomeTrader's request we issued more than 50 free licenses of TradeSim Enterprise for HomeTrader staff to use for the benefit of their members in exchange for some reciprocal promotion of our products. At the time I naively assumed that some of these licenses would be installed in their classroom training computers to benefit their members. We now believe that there was a conflict of interest right from the start because HomeTrader was in the business of selling back testing reports to its members whereas our business is focused on supplying software to anyone who wants to do their own back testing. Because of this we believe that HomeTrader’s efforts to promote TradeSim to their members were minimal and no classroom training on how to use TradeSim was ever offered to its members.

We were under the impression that the 50 free licenses issued to HomeTrader would be used for the benefit of its members, but we now have feedback from several HomeTrader members that have reported to us that at no stage were they given hands on training on how to use TradeSim. In many cases members have reported to us that they are still incapable of putting together a simple trading system using MetaStock and testing it using TradeSim. In addition to the initial $6,000 course fee these members are paying $500 per year membership just so they can be fed more formulas and systems without understanding the underlying system concepts. If that is the way that Home Trader want to run their business then I have no qualms about that. However, had we had known about this at the time we would not have issued free licenses of TradeSim to HomeTrader staff, instead they should have purchased these copies from us for however they wanted to use it in their business.

Not only that it appears that whilst using our backtesting software for FREE, HomeTrader were also working on their own back testing platform without our knowlege whilst at the same time pleading with us why we should continue ro renew their FREE licenses without paying us for them. What on earth were they thinking ? Were they going to use our software, (which they paid nothing for) for as long as they needed to, until they could replace it with their own ? It appears that way but fortunately I stopped renewing their FREE licenses before it got to this point but it is not hard to imagine what would have happened if I had not done this.

When Home Trader finally released their own back testing platform they were all out to denigrate our product as much as they could so that their members would move away from it. This was after they had used it for FREE for years and now all of a sudden TradeSim had become the worst backtesting software of all times all because it did not have survivorship bias free capability. Well, at any stage did the managing directors or staff of Capital Intelligence actually phone me up or email and request that I add this feature to our software even whilst at the time they were still using our software without paying for it ? Did they consider to offer to pay me to put this feature in our software ? After all, our paying customers would quite often email us with feedback and ideas and quite often we would implement them in a later release. But not Home Trader, they wanted to use our software for NOTHING, charge their members for their back testing service and keep all of their ideas to themselves for their own back testing platform and then later bag the crap out of our software for not having these features. Fortunately, since then we have added survivorship bias free back testing capability to TradeSim, and you can have this capability for less than $200. There is no need to pay Home Trader $6,000 for the privilege of using this feature.

HomeTrader's distorted view of the commercial world is no different than a carpenter turning up at a hardware store and expecting the store to issue them with free power tools just because someone else might see them using the tools and then go out and buy the tools for themselves. Things don't work like that in the real commercial world unless their is a tight iron clad reciprocal arrangement that benefits both parties, but somehow in HomeTrader's distorted view of the commercial world they believe that this sort of arrangement should only work for their benefit and no one else's. For example can I send someone to HomeTrader and expect them to get a free $6,000 course based on the promise that they will tell their friends all about it and hopefully get more sales for HomeTrader ?? I doubt it ! In fact what is more bizaar is that HomeTrader sell a tutorial on how to backtest systems using TradeSim but charge $400 for it in addition to the $6000 course fee which is a pre-requisite for accessing this $400 CD. They say they have to charge $400 for it because it cost them money to put it together, but for some reason when using our software for NOTHING they don't believe they should pay for it as though TradeSim magically wrote itself and appeared to me out of thin air and so I should automatically give it to HomeTrader to profit from in their own business along with the millions of dollars that HomeTrader raised when it went public ! Yep that makes a lot of sense doesn't it. Which begs the question as to where has all of the money gone because I certainly never saw a cent of it and the current share price is barely one tenth of its original float price ?

HomeTrader will argue that they generated sales for us even though they didn't directly sell the software. Of course this is undisputable as any sales would have been incidental because their members would have seen them use our software and wanted to have their own copy rather than pay HomeTrader to use it for them. However this is no different than their members seeing the Dell computers in the classroom training room and buying a Dell computer because they thought it was a good computer. But would Dell give HomeTrader free computers ? Of course they wouldn't because it just doesn't work like that in the real world ! Home Trader also say that Equis provided them with free copies of MetaStock but this is another unfortunate story altogether.

But there is a difference between using the software and promoting the software which HomeTrader has difficulty understanding. HomeTrader told us they couldn't sell TradeSim because of ASIC restrictions. Well if that is the case then you are not actually selling our software to your members and you should then pay for the copies of TradeSim that you are using in your own business. Alternatively since you conveniently forgot to add a courtesy notice to each report and chart from TradeSim as originally requested then you should have paid us royalties for each copy reproduced from our software. It is simple as that ! Either way HT have paid us absolutely NOTHING and essentially contributed NOTHING in the way of enhancements to our product. Instead HT has gone and developed their own backtesting platform based on the many ideas that are used in our software for which they never paid us for. Is this what they call promoting our software ?

If there are any Home Trader members who have signed up for the $6000 Home Trader course before March 2008 and have paid extra for the MetaStock course we would like to hear from you. Specifically we would like some feedback on the following questions.

1. At any time did HomeTrader staff allow you free access to the use of TradeSim in their classroom training ?
2. How much did HomeTrader charge you for each back testing service from TradeSim and how many times did you pay for this service ?
3. In addition to the course on MetaStock did HomeTrader offer you tuition on how to use TradeSim ?
4. Did HomeTrader have course notes relating to the use of TradeSim ?
5. Did HomeTrader discourage you from using TradeSim and suggest that it would be better if you paid them to back test your trading systems for you ?
6. On any of the backtesting reports that were purchased by members were these reports accompanied by a simple courtesy message similar to the following:- “Produced from TradeSim courtesy of Compuvision Australia – www.compuvision.com.au”
7. Were you aware of HomeTrader developing their own back testing platform whilst still using TradeSim and charging members for back testing reports from the free licenses of TradeSim that we issued to them ?

If you have information relating to this please contact us on enquiries@compuvision.com.au

Any information submitted to us will be kept in the strictest of confidence.

Kind Regards,

David Samborsky.

Ashleighs Dump

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Last Modified on February 12, 2010