Back to Articles Index
This is an article by Adam Hartley of SnapDragon Systems that appeared in The Technical Trader and Club 3000
I thought that I would write to tell readers of my experiences with AudiTrack, a simulated brokerage service. For those of you not familiar with them, they offer a simulation of a futures brokerage service where you phone in the trades and are given fills etc. but with no real money involved. The idea is to enable emerging money managers and CTAs to develop an independently audited track record to show to prospective backers.
Before describing the service itself, let me first explain my reasons for using it. I have been interested in trading for about 10 years now and started off whilst a student trading options and then futures. In those days my small capitalisation and my inexperience meant that I never lasted very long before dropping out to "lick my wounds" and to re-think my strategy. Nevertheless I kept on reading, testing and learning until I became quite knowledgeable about trading and the markets, to the point where I was able to combine this interest with my programming ability and to start up my own business as a financial software consultant. My work ranges from TradeStation Easy Language programming through to writing software to price exotic options for city institutions and selling a real-time technical analysis software package. One of the advantages of my work is that I do get to meet and talk with some successful traders and to learn about their methods. This, combined with my continuing research on trading led me to think that perhaps it was time that I tried once again to pursue the aim of profitable trading. Which leads me on to AudiTrack.
Whilst through my business I now had more funds than in my earlier student days I did not feel well enough established or have sufficient risk capital to be able to throw a large amount of money at the project to "see if it would stick". So I elected to use AudiTrack simulated brokerage service, not initially to establish a track record but in order to go through the learning process without bankrupting myself in the process. I have personally decided that I am not interested in the pursuit of a Holy Grail mechanical system and that for me there really is no substitute for experience and putting in the hours watching the markets and learning how they work. Using a simulated brokerage service, I could make my mistakes and learn from them and still be around to profit from my learning.
That was the rationale behind my starting up with AudiTrack and I am pleased to say that so far it seems to be working out as I had hoped. I have now been trading for seven months with them, and to start with, I basically lost money. However, I have gradually started to refine my technique to the point when I am now making money consistently day trading. I have now completed two profitable months and at the time of writing November is looking very good as well. In addition certain of my clients have expressed an interest in backing me once I have a sufficient track record.
As far as AudiTrack themselves are concerned they do a good job though I have not tried any of the rival services. My only gripe is that they do not have a European desk to speak of and since I am trading the LIFFE futures markets here in the UK this means that I am mostly phoning my orders through to an answer phone in the morning and having to guess at my fill prices until they are confirmed. They do claim to have a European desk in Portugal but two days of trying that soon convinced me that I was wasting my time: the Portuguese desk does not open until 8.30 UK time, long after the Bund and Italian bond markets have opened and they frequently did not answer their phones. For someone such as myself who is trading on one minute bar charts this is not acceptable; once when I finally got through they said sorry about that but they had been too busy trading themselves. They are clearly running the simulated brokerage as a side line. Anyway I gave up on Portugal and have been using the US operation without any problems. There have been a few accounting problems: I get the impression that the vast majority of their clients are US based and having to process foreign currency accounts has led to a few accounting errors. Fortunately, since I keep track of all my trades and my accounts myself I have managed to pick up on these quickly. The AudiTrack personnel are always very helpful and quickly rectify any mistakes that occur.
I always welcome feedback and talking trading and can be contacted on: tel 01865-725506, fax 01865-725507, or Email at ahartley@snapdragon.co.uk. You may also be interested in my web-site which contains useful information for traders: http://www.snapdragon.co.uk. AudiTrack can be contacted on 1-800-616-2825; I have no affiliation with AudiTrack other than being a client of theirs.
Back to Articles Index