BE WARNED. Steer clear of this mob !! Two words comes to mind in reference to HomeTrader -"RUN AWAY " ! . These dudes are always hatching up new ways of extracting money from the gullible. Everything they offer is always in mutliples of thousands of dollars. You'd be hard pressed to find them offering something of value to the general public for a few hundred dollars unless it was one of their free seminars designed to get you hooked into paying out LOTS more with high pressure sales tactics ! These people would give used car salesmen a run for their money !

We have received numerous feedback from HomeTrader members who say that after forking out $6,000 (the last I heard it was $8000! ) plus extras they still do not know how to put together a basic system using MetaStock, and back test it using TradeSim. They feel obligated to keep forking out $500 per year membership renewel because they have not been tought the fundamentals of trading system design. As for myself, Hometrader ripped me off blind and then stabbed me in the back after a 5 year period ! They paid nothing for the use of our software, profiited from its use whilst keeping it from their members and then proceeded to develop their own software in competition to it. All of this was going on whilst being a publicly listed company on the Australian Stock Exchange which consistently payed both of their CEO's between $120,000-140,000 per year whilst the company was bleeding to death ! We should have known that Capital Intelligence (CPT) was not going to last in the same way its predecessor Daytrader HQ (DAY) didn't last either ! The irony is that they approached us with their bulls**t and never the other way around and nor would I ever think of approaching this company but I like many others got sucked in when they started knocking on the door !

I've got to laugh at the blurb on the latest HomeTrader website. It says they(HomeTrader) have spent in excess of $2.3 million on research and development :) LOL Well pardon my ignorance, every time I have read one of their corporate financial statements in the past (when they were a publicly listed company Capital Intelligence) it always had '$0' for the amount of expenditure on R&D which also reflects the amount of money they paid me for the use of our software over a period of at least 5 years ! So where did the 2.3 million come from ? We think this is as much porky pies as claiming that Equis gave them free copies of MetaStock even though they never really sold MetaStock ! But to give HomeTrader the benefit of doubt, they would have spent some money on R&D, just not $2.3 millions worth ! The reason I say this is because they were using free copies of our software for at least 5 years to develop their canned trading systems which they are still trying to flog now ! The catch is of course you have to part with $8000 to get hold of their holygrail trading systems but in my honest opinion after finally seeing their systems there are many good books that you can have for a fraction of the price and still get to keep nearly all of the $8000 for your trading capital base ! My advice is to save your money and steer clear of HomeTrader.com.au ! So you are better informed spend your time reading books and asking questions on many of the free forums. We've even provided a list of the free forums on our links page. These are FREE forums that cost nothing to join not the $500 per year forum that HomeTrader wants you to pay !!

Of course after reading this we got a phone call from one of the CEO's from HomeTrader which is probably one of the very few times we'd ever received any calls from them even though we had issued them with over 50 free licenses of TradeSim . You see they were to busy hoodwinking us whilst keep us in the dark, than to keep us informed of what they were really doing which was ripping us off. Anyway he(one of the CEO's) told me that I'd got it all wrong and 'was on the wrong page' but I wasn't going to have a bar of their sales pitch ! In the real world money talks and bulls**t walks ! It's really quite simple HomeTrader, 'PAY YOUR WAY AND STOP EXPECTING EVERYONE ELSE TO GIVE YOU FREEBIES' !

If you have noticed that Hometrader is no longer under the umbrella of a publicly listed company and is just running as a normal company which is where it should have been all along. Yes the parent company Capital Intelligence(CPT) is delisted and it has mutated into another company. Lets be honest, Capital Intelligence never had a long term business model that justified all of the money invested into it by gullible shareholders. In actual fact we find it hard to believe that they had a business at all ! Even with all of the share investors cash as well as begging for freebies from software vendors such as myself and charging the punters $6000 a pop (plus lots of extras) they still couldn't be profitable in the long run ! It just goes to show that there are a lot of BS companies listed on the stock exchange that have a very limited life span and can't possibly justify their existence. Their business only really exists until the share holders money runs out which is exactly what happened to Capital Intelligence !

In HomeTrader's case they had nothing to offer except a few canned trading systems which they backtested to death and the promise of a possible return on trading provided you played your cards right ! Of course trading systems are a dime a dozen and can be found for free by scouring the internet. Better still, HomeTrader could have bundled the whole lot into a book and CD and sold it for $27.95 ! Why go through all of the trouble of a public listing for a flea bitten two bob company that has no prospects ? There was no justifcation except for the CEO's to reward themselves with a consistent salary of between $120,000-140,000 per year through the life of the company even when the company was bleeding to death ! I wonder what they are paying themselves now ;) Other than that, the return to the investors was always going to be negative ! Whatever they had it certainly didn't justify a public listing on the stock exchange ! Just bear this in mind the next time you see another Johnny come lately share market educator/trainer and its glossy prospectus hanging out for your hard earned cash ! Just remember Online Trading Systems (OTS), DayTrader HQ (DAY) and now Capital Intelligence (CPT) all lined up next to each other in the corporate cemetary of failures !

Apart from this and the myriad of public forums slagging off HomeTrader it's hard to find any negative press about HomeTrader. That's because anytime there was, the bully boys from HomeTrader would use threatening tactics to get it removed and in some cases they were effective. However thanks to the internet archives you can still view it.

Ashleighs Dump

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(now$8000) 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.

Hi David,

not sure why you're bringing up stuff from 2003 and 2005 in 2010. I am an ex member of staff - not a director. I no longer have any association with HomeTrader. You forget some simple historical facts:

As an ex staff member I’m not sure why you are buying into this either. By the way did HT pay you for your time and services to them because they never paid me and I have never received a single cent from them. Of course you did expect HT to pay you for your time did you not ?

1. You decided to give the licences to HomeTrader in exchange for cross promotion. Nobody forced you to do this.

HT didn't promote TradeSim like I asked them to nor did they sell it either. I have seen some of their back testing reports that they sold to their clients. None of the charts or reports that were reproduced from TradeSim had any courtesy notices as requested as part of the original agreement. There is no website link or any details from what I saw. It’s ironical that their current back testing done using a competing product now feature this courtesy notice. See it wasn’t so hard was it ;)

2. Whilst HT used those licences Tradesim was promoted heavily to thousands of members nationwide. I remember buying Tradesim as a result of seeing what it could do in a 'members meeting' in late 2003 when I was a member myself. I am sure I was not alone in my purchase.

So how much of this promotion actually translated into sales ?? Making up some arbitrary figure based on gut feeling is not very useful. Was it 1, 2, 5, 10 copies etc ?

3. At some point you decided that HT should pay for the licences you had given to them for free.

Yes because they didn't promote it like I asked them to nor did they sell it. They were profiting from its use by selling back testing reports to their clients so I assumed that it was reasonable that they pay me for some of the R&D that other paying vlients who actually purchased the product from me had paid for. I have feedback from your own members that say that you actually tried to discourage people from using the software itself in preference to paying HomeTrader to use it for them.

4. You suspended the licenses. I remember because one of our computers had to be reinstalled, and you allowed special one-off permission to reinstall the software. Then you re-suspended the licenses.

Yes I suspended the licenses aropund September 2007 because HT didn't pay for the renewal when I requested that they do so, but they still owe me as far as I am concerned. In actual fact when I told of this arrangement to some of their members they were shocked and taken back by it. Even when I posted about this on HomeTraders members forum in response to one of their staff members badgering me on the price of my software they deleted the post very quickly ! I wonder why ?

5. Every time Tradesim was used to my knowledge Compuvision and/or the Tradesim software was acknowledged. This acknowledgement was included in writing in training materials, backtests, and verbally in classes and members meetings.

Not from the feedback that I have received from some of HT’s members. Nor did HT offer any classroom training for TradeSim. People had to pay extra to buy HT’s "Back Testing made simple" DVD tutorial so don’t try and tell me that everything that HT did was in my interests. None of what HomeTrader did was in my interests. They just did what they wanted to do in order to maximise their own promotion and profits not to mention their own pay packets !

6. HT started experimenting with Amibroker. Amibroker turned out to be 50x faster than Metastock and Tradesim, and cost around 5-10x less. Is that 'bagging' the product or just a fact?

Not when it comes to advanced statistical analysis which is one of the main benefits of TradeSim over other competing software. You chose not use that facility because of your own restrictive trading systems but a lot of users do, and are quite happy with its performance which is 5-100x faster than the competitors.

And yes unbeknownst to me at the time that HT wanted me to renew their licenses(late 2007) I believe they were working on their own back testing platform. It was a mixed blessing in disguise that I did not renew their licenses. What on earth were they planning to do ? Were they going to promote my software in favour of selling their own ? How was that going to work ?

7. Amibroker has features that Tradesim/Metastock doesn't have, and still doesn't have that you ignore. One of the main features is the ability to optimise a system (i.e. systematically change the values of indicators). Amibroker can do 50 backtests at the click of a button, and view a 3D graph of the results. In Metastock and Tradesim you can't do this, it takes ages. You need to run each back test manually, and save the output file with a different filename, record the results manually, change the code, and rerun the back test. I know - I spent literally dozens of hours doing just that in 2003,2004, 2005, and 2006.

The converse is true. The conventional optimization procedure that you currently use is flawed and useless for portfolio systems. You are wasting your time using it. I am currently testing the next phase in advanced statistical portfolio optimization. For example I can step through 20 values and run over 100,000 simulations and not just 20 simulations like you do. There is a big difference in the quality and integrity of the results which you can’t compare with because you don’t have this facility. No amount of spin can hide this fact. It will be released very soon and the update is free to registered users.

8. In the period that HT used Amibroker and Tradesim at the same time, it was made abundantly clear to members that if they wanted to electronically back test their own systems:

a. Metastock and Tradesim are simple to use and learn, and cost over$1,000 for the package. HomeTrader also offered a training video for sale on how to use Tradesim.

Yes but it costs an additional $400 and not available to the general public and you now give away free tutorials for Amibroker so how was that supposed to help me ?

b. Amibroker is highly technical to use, and should only be used by keen programmers, but is cheap - around $200.

Yes but you now have to pay HomeTrader $8000 plus extra code packs to use it. Not exactly easy and cheap is it ? TradeSim Enterprise Edition can be purchased for as low as $75 for a 30 day trial with the ability to credit this amount on any of the time unlimited versions. It now has all of those features that HT claimed that it had that nobody else had and all for $75 !

If you call that 'bagging' the software then so be it. To me there is a tradeoff, and people can choose which tradeoff they are willing to accept.

Yes it’s a pity that you didn’t lay this out when you were pleading for me to renew your free licenses in late 2007. It would have made my decision much easier.

9. We also tried out Wealthlab software, which had a high programming capability, but was slow and crashed a lot.

And I bet you Wealthlab didn’t offer you free licenses like I did. Why would they if you weren’t going to sell it for them ?

10. We also tried out BullCharts, which in my opinion is superior to Metastock, but was at the time even slower than Metastock at backtesting.

How can it be when BullCharts doesn’t have it’s own backtester. BullCharts interfaces with TradeSim and BullCharts sell TradeSim unlike you lot which sold absolutely nothing but like to beat your chest about hopw you sold more than other people who actually did sell it. Also you may not be aware but HomeTrader would have run with BullCharts except they offered the vendor of this package a measily amount of money, something of the order of less than 3% of its retail value ! You could hardly blame any vendor from passing up that offer. This seems to be a pattern with HomeTrader which charge megabucks for its own offerings but offer less than peanut shells for everyone elses IP :(

11. Although you wanted money after you changed your mind about giving HT free licences, you NEVER accepted the fact that HT had sent you literally dozens if not hundreds of customers during the period 2003-2008. To this day you label this as 'conjecture'.

So how many of these recommendations translated into actual sales ?? 5% 10% ?? Do you have any evidence or is this just your opinion ? And how much did HT make out of selling backtesting reports to its members ?

At the end of the day I am asking HT to pay for TradeSim simply because it was using TradeSim as a tool in it’s business to profit from and it didn’t oblige by the original agreement but you still have trouble comprehending this issue.

12. Where your logic falls down is that if so much 'gain' was made by HT for using your software in front of so many people, then how did they get away with it by keeping the fact they were using Tradesim a 'secret'? The fact is I personally introduced Tradesim to hundreds of people, the pricing options, and how to get hold of a copy of Tradesim.

Because their was a conflict of interest because HT profited from selling back testing reports to its members so do you honestly think they were going to put my needs above their own needs particularly when they weren’t profiting from the sales of TradeSim ? Remember that I am dealing with a publically listed company with many shareholders who are looking for a return on their investment so I don’t think I was a high priority on their list do you ?

13. HT could not directly sell Tradesim at one point in time, because their ASIC licence limited them to using Bourse and Metastock Software. Even though Tradesim was an add-on to Metastock, it was not considered part of the licence.

Not my problem. HT decided to go public so if that is the compromise that HT chose to make then HT should have purchased a corporate license for TradeSim as part of it’s business plan. I mean here is a company that raised millions of dollars of funds and are you trying to tell me that it couldn’t afford to pay for a corporate license for a piece of software which was integral to its business operations ? Did HT pay for the Microsoft Operating systems running on its training computers or did it expect Microsoft to give it to them for free ?

Now I know that John Day told me that Equis gave them free copies of MetaStock to use in their classroom, but at the level that you are criticising MetaStock I find that sort of negative slur against a vendor that offered you free copies of their software very disrespectful and unappreciative. I for one would certainly not want to deal with a company that behaved like that and I am glad I no longer do !

14. HT did sell a backtesting video to teach people how to use Tradesim. The video was created by 2 members of Hometrader. There was a deal (to which I am not privvy) whereby those individuals received a fee for each copy of the software sold. For licensing and IP reasons the software was sold to existing HT members only. Where's your tutorial video? - I don't remember one for the period 2003-2008. To my knowledge HomeTrader is the only company who has ever produced this. Every person who bought the backtesting tuition video is likely to have seperately bought the Tradesim software (otherwise there wouldn't be much point in buying the tutorial).

You mean the "Back Testing Made Simple" video which you only offered to your members from a publicly accessible webpage which is no available but can still be accessed by clicking on the archive link ?

So what was the benefit to myself ? I mean if you had offered it to the general public then I might have been able to recommend it to people but you didn’t want to do this either and you still don’t want to do this. Those individuals who allegedly receive royalties from the sale of your DVD are being short changed. If HT keep asserting that TradeSim is not as good as their own offerings then they shouldn’t have any problems selling that DVD to the general public who can’t afford their $8000 course ! Why don’t they do this ?

As far as video tutorials are concerned here are some free video tutorials that HT should have done for me but never did probably because they were busy trying to profit from their own DVD and because I am now considered a competitor to them.

http://www.compuvision.com.au/Examples/TradeSimQuickStartTutorial.htm

15. HT didn't 'steal' any of your IP. Name one thing that was 'stolen'. HomeTrader had their systems, which were programmed into a number of different computer programs. For a while, Tradesim was the best software out there.

I never said they stole anything. They plagiarized it. A lot of the features in TradeSim appeared in HT’s backtesting platform and I believe their platform even interfaces to TradeSim. They had free access to TradeSim to help design their own software. That's just great isn't it, not to mention all of the bagging I got as soon as you released it !

16. Tradesim is an add-on to Metastock and Bullcharts. Therefore you are hamstrung by 3rd parties as to the overall capabilities and business destiny of your software.

Then why did you use it in the first place. I never asked you to. You rang me up remember. It was not the other way around. Also why in one of his emails to me did Jason Davis later want to resell TradeSim even though ASIC banned him from selling it ? I told him to buy it through Paritech like everyone else because they are the authorised distributors of it to other resellers. Of course unless HT is paying 20 bucks a piece for anyone else’s software they are not happy about re-selling anything. This is the whole irony of HomeTrader. Even after getting software for nothing or paying very little for it they still cannot run a profitable business !

17. Occasionally you would make changes to the software which:

a. Produced different back test results to previous versions of the software!

b. Slowed down the software. (that annoying thing in the bottom right hand corner that would pop up and scroll hundreds of lines).

- We helped identify those problems, which took you a few months to fix.

- We had to figure out what the exact problem was by looking through pages of output and charts to find out what you had changed in your software - yet not bothered to tell anyone.

Not just HT, but lots of other paying customers provided much more feedback than you lot did. You kept your own proprietary ideas to yourself and did not want to share them with anyone else but you benefitted from free upgrades and many of the ideas that were incorporated into the software as a result of the feedback from many of the customers who actually purchased it from me.

- HomeTrader had no control over new releases which would yet again produce a different result, or slow the software down.

We added a proper report log when creating a trade database. Yes initially when we launched it, it slowed down the trade database process but it provided detailed information regarding warnings and errors in data. We have improved that interface over subsequent releases. You obviously don’t regard the integrity of the data to be important and just prefer something that produces a report as quickly as possible. Sorry I don’t agree with that philosophy. A backtest is only as good as the data you feed to it. Garbage in garbage out applies here.

18. By moving to software which was fully programmed by us, we controlled the algorithms used to ensure that back tests were accurate, and stayed accurate.

And how do your clients who use your software ensure that is the case ??

19. You tried entering into a commercial deal to sell a 3rd party add-on for Amibroker, but got knocked back. I suspect if you had managed to do this, you wouldn't be so vitriolic against HomeTrader because they would probably use it and promote it.

What is this rubbish ?? I’ve never written or sold a third party app for Amibroker ever so I don’t know where you got this rubbish from. It is true that a lot of TradeSim users use TradeSim with Amibroker and some have requested that I write a direct interface similar to the one I provide with MetaStock but I have not bothered about it because of other commitments. Even if I did I would give it away with TradeSim and wouldn’t charge people any extra for it. Someone else who is more familiar with Amibroker can write it. Also I don’t even use Amibroker.

And all of these things you are telling me now. Where was the important phone call from the CEO telling me these things ? You are talking nonsense now !

20. I suspect that you are sour because you didn't have as many new purchases from around 2008 onwards, which partly demonstrates that HT had a positive impact on your business. Additionally, HT had a decline in sales during the gobal financial crisis, as I suspect - so did you.

You can suspect all you like. You are overlooking one important point and that I was privy to what was being written on your forum and I didn’t like what I was seeing. I went a long with it for a while whilst HT obviously decided to launch a negative campaign against my software, and to say otherwise is insulting my intelligence. Feedback from some of your members confirms this as well. If anyone had sour grapes it is you lot just because I cancelled your licenses because you refuse to pay me for my intellectual property. Next time be reasonable with the people you deal with and this sort of thing won’t happen.

21. When did you ever come into a HomeTrader office in any Australian capital city, and speak face-to-face with a trainer, or attend a class, or a members meeting to see how your software was being promoted? Obviously you were too busy to find the time do that for 6 years, and one day the money stopped rolling in. And now you're looking for people to blame.

How many times did the CEO’s of Capital Intelligence ring me up ?? I can count it on one hand. Even when I cancelled their licenses in 2007 I did not receive a single call from either of them. They know the reason why. Also did they ever put any links to my website on their website ?

Also the onus is not up to me to come and visit them. It was HomeTrader that knocked at my door and wanted freebies. It was never the other way around and never would have been. I expected a lot more from this verbal agreement, and instead the propriertors chose to ignore the original deal, paid me nothing for my IP, provided minimal feedback for improvements and in the end plagiarized my software and then launched a negative campaign against it in order to poison my name.

And I don’t blame anyone for anything and nor have I done nothing wrong ! I just asked HomeTrader to pay me for the copies of TradeSim that it procured from me. Nothing more and nothing less ! It shouldn’t be to difficult for you lot to understand this issue but then again for a company that only offers 20 bucks a piece for a $700 charting package and 10 bucks a piece for a quality data source I can understand how it would be very difficult for HT to pay a reasonable price for anyone else’s intellectual property.

And according to this guy’s account of HT I don’t think I’d want to come and see you lot.

http://www.mysharetrading.com/my-trading/trading-mind-games-psychology.htm

The fact is that innovations in Metastock/Tradesim could not keep up with the innovations that were coming out from Amibroker. From around Metastock version 7.2 onwards there were hardly any new features produced by Equis that were worth the money - a fact you pointed out in your own promotional material - no doubt to the chagrin of Equis who also appear unwilling to maintain a commercial deal with you. I notice that Tradesim is conspicuous in its absense from its 3rd party add-on section.

equis.com/products/thirdparty

And where does Market Analyst fit into all of this ? I believe you offer this to your members for a nominal fee. You are very silent on this front for some reason. Do you care to indulge us with the differences between Market Analysts and Amibroker ? You seem to only like criticising the products that you don’t use which is exactly the treatment I got after you stopped using TradeSim and MetaStock.

Yes and we all know that story about MetaStock, but apart from some of its faults MetaStock is probably still the most widely used charting package and will be for many years to come. It has a simple and streamlined interface and is adequate for most traders use and you don’t need to spend $8000 on some course plus code packs to use it !

Lots of bells and whistles doesn’t automatically equate to being profitable in the markets. It doesn’t bother me that Equis does not sell my product. They allow me and other 3 rd party vendors to freely advertise our products in their 3 rd party section on their forum. That is more than adequate as far as I am concerned.

Vista was the best thing that happened to Equis as it unwittingly forced some people to shell out for an upgrade. Metastock's only lasting legacy is its file format used for storing stock price information.

Yes but Equis has been a very profitable company over the years. Looking at your quarterly reports I can’t say the same about you lot. How much funds do you have left now and how long before you burn through all of it or are you waiting for the revolution to come ? How many more rabbits do you plan to pull out of your hat in order to save face ?

Amibroker on the other hand comes out with new features almost monthly. Amibroker eclipsed Metastock, Bullcharts and other software in terms of functionality a couple of years ago, and Tradesim has suffered as a result because it never managed to partner commericially with Amibroker.

That’s funny a lot of people still use TradeSim with Amibroker ;)

And what about Market Analyst ? How does that compare ?

I look forward to your:

1. New software that is not a 3rd party add-on.

2. Tutorial videos.

3. Increased sales.

4. New forward looking perspective.

Why would I listen to your advice when all you have done is to criticise ??

As far as video tutorials are concerned here are some free video tutorials that HT should have done for me but never did probably because it was to much to ask and because I am now considered a competitor to them.

http://www.compuvision.com.au/Examples/TradeSimQuickStartTutorial.htm

You had some good insights into backtesting trading systems a few years ago, and life seemed more positive back then. You're clearly a clever and innovative man, so why not reharness that positive energy.

And which your company took full advantage of and essentially contributed nothing to the up keep of the program. It’s ironical that some of your members have provided me with much more feedback than you lot ever did.

The last paragraph of the last post I made still stands ! Be careful when dealing with a publically listed company. Don’t assume anything !

TradeSim® is a registered trademark of Compuvision Australia Pty Ltd. Metastock® is a registered trademark of Equis International. Windows® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.

Copyright © 2000-2010 by Compuvision Australia P/L

ABN 86 006 574 090

Web http://www.compuvision.com.au

Email enquiries@compuvision.com.au

Last Modified on January 4, 2012