The Cyborg Trader

Introducing the Cyborg Trading Referral Program

2012-01-19T14:21:00.000-05:00

We are pleased to introduce the Cyborg Trading ReferralProgram. Discover the great benefits and incentives that this program has tooffer, including product license discounts and monetary compensation.

Click here to learn more.

OBAA Innovation Award Finalist

2011-09-27T10:36:00.001-04:00

Cyborg Trading Systems was recognized for its pursuit of innovation at the Ontario Business Achievement Awards.

For more information about the Ontario Business Achievement Awards, please visit the OBAA website.

Research Collaboration With Leading Academic Institutes

2011-09-09T09:57:00.001-04:00

“A typical approach to trading is to analyze data over a few days, look for trends and develop a strategy,” he says. “But Cyborg has data every millisecond. There may be patterns there, but you can’t see them or you can’t react to them. We want to apply our expertise in data analysis to what Cyborg is collecting.”

– Dr. Matt Davison, Professor of Applied Mathematics and Statistical & Actuarial Sciences, University of Western Ontario

“It’s a question of how to convert information into machine instructions,” he says. “That’s program optimization. If the computer compiles instructions twice as fast as before, you can double its speed without changing the hardware. Once you figure out how to make a computer learn, to recognize patterns, you can apply it to handwriting or market analysis. It’s the same concept.”

- Stephen Watt, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario

For the full article, click here.

Cloud Technology Gaining Momentum in the Financial Industry

2011-06-16T10:00:00.016-04:00

Markets Media Online recently posted an article entitled "Cloud Model Gains Adherence", which discusses the significant momentum cloud technology is gaining in the financial industry.

According to Markets Media, firms across the financial markets spectrum-exchanges banks, buyside, market data and service providers-are viewing cloud technology as a third alternative to the build versus buy dilemma. Instead of implementing costly infrastructure, firms will be able to pick and choose from a menu of services delivered via the cloud.

“A desire for reducing complexity and creating shared services is driving a fundamental shift of economics", Sherwin Uretsky, senior director of financial markets strategy in Cisco's Internet Business Solutions Group, told Markets Media.

Cyborg Trading Systems is a strong advocate of the cloud, and is currently utilizing it for its institutional custom automation trading platform, Cloud Trader. The cloud is ideal for complex event processing, and is an effective way to scale based on shifting infrastructure requirements. Infrastructure costs can be significantly reduced by leveraging the cloud’s scalability and global accessibility for data distribution and storage.

Cloud Trader uses the cloud as a relay, whereby traders can select the desired colocation server to execute algorithms on, and deploy the algorithms globally through the cloud to the exchanges.

For the full Markets Media article, please follow the link: Cloud Model Gains Adherence.

Cyborg Trading Systems at SIFMA, New York

2011-06-15T09:57:00.006-04:00

Cyborg Trading Systems at the SIFMA Financial Services Technology Leaders Forum and Expo in New York, June 14-16th.

For complete forum and expo details, please visit the SIFMA website.

Microsoft Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award

2011-05-31T12:32:00.011-04:00

Cyborg Trading Systems is the proud third place recipient of the Microsoft Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award. This prestigious award is distributed to companies utilizing Microsoft technologies to create their cloud-based products. Recipients of this award have been recognized to have disruptively innovative applications.

From left to right:

Gladstone Grant, VP Developer & Platform Evangelism, Microsoft

Ben Bittrolff, CFO, Cyborg Trading Systems

Christian Beauclair, Principal Developer Evangelist, Microsoft

For more information on the Microsoft Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award, please visit the website: Microsoft Blue Sky Innovation Excellence Award

Sterling Trader Connects to Cyborg’s Excel Add-In Trading Tool

2011-05-16T15:30:00.000-04:00

CHICAGO, May 16, 2011 - Sterling Trader is pleased to announce certification with Cyborg Trading Systems’ Excel Add-In, a real-time trading tool designed to bridge the gap between developing trading models in Excel and automating them on live markets.

The Cyborg Excel Add-In allows traders to create trading strategies from an Excel spreadsheet, and then execute these strategies through the Sterling Trader API. Traders can easily create, test and automate Excel trading strategies in a short timeframe using Cyborg’s intuitive interface; no programming or scripting is required, resulting in rapid turn-around times for trading strategies. It is ideal for traders that already create mechanical models in Excel, as there is no learning curve, long development times or programming costs required to automate their strategies.

“Our products are focused on giving traders the tools to create sophisticated trading strategies without having to learn how to program or script,” said James McInnes, CEO, Cyborg Trading Systems. “The Cyborg Excel Add-In is a natural progression for us and truly redefines the flexibility and sophistication of automated trading.”

Sterling Trader clients utilizing the Cyborg Excel Add-In for automated trading will still enjoy Sterling’s superior performance and routing capabilities while benefiting from Cyborg’s Advanced Trade Management and Custom Analytics applications that are available with the Cyborg Excel Add-In. Cyborg also offers Trade Simulation to test trading strategies prior to taking strategies live on Sterling Trader.

“We are always looking for innovative tools our clients can use to stay on top of these highly competitive trading markets,” said Steve Sierszulski, President and Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Trader. “Cyborg’s ability to continually create sophisticated, yet intuitive solutions delivers those tools into the hands of our clients. The Cyborg Excel Add-In is yet another example of how well the Sterling Trader and Cyborg Trading systems work together.”

About Sterling Trader: Sterling Trader is a broker-neutral, professional direct access trading service and global trading network offering a full service order routing and management suite built to support the direct access trading needs of professional traders. For further information, please contact: 

Stephen A. Sierszulski, Chief Executive Officer 
steve@sterlingtrader.com
1.312.346.9600

About Cyborg Trading Systems: Cyborg Trading Systems provides customized high-speed algorithmic trading systems for proprietary traders and institutions. For additional information, please visit www.cyborgtrading.com, or contact:  

Jonathan Scratch , VP Product Management
 jon.scratch@cyborgtrading.com
1.866.274.3342 x 252

The Future of Finance is in the Clouds

2011-05-10T15:16:00.003-04:00

The global cloud computing market was worth an enormous $40.7 billion in 2010 according a new Forester Research report entitled “Sizing the Cloud”. Analysts are predicting exponential growth in the cloud market over the next few years, and the big corporations are all rushing to seize their share of the market. With this momentous shift towards the cloud, how will the financial industry be affected?

The cloud is ideal for intensive calculations, and in finance, being able to process vast amounts of data rapidly and take action will dictate who comes out on top. Public and private (collocated) clouds can be used as relays and massively distributed complex event processing engines to process large quantities of data rapidly.

Financial institutions are already beginning to leverage the cloud for data distribution and storage. This is ideal as the cloud makes distributing data to end users significantly easier, as companies no longer have to create their own infrastructure and can leverage the cloud’s global accessibility. Additionally, utilizing the cloud is a very effective way to scale computing capacity based on shifting needs, due to the elimination of large upfront infrastructure costs.

The introduction of high-speed automated trading systems has brought about a battle over latency. These trading systems must be able to process events, make decisions and issue the necessary trades with microsecond latency in order to stay competitive. As these systems begin to take advantage of the cloud many current competitive advantages become obsolete in this revolutionary shift.

What effect do you predict the cloud computing market will have on the financial industry, and more specifically algorithmic trading? Please feel free to share your thoughts below.

Cyborg Trading Systems Wins Innovation Award

2011-03-25T09:09:00.007-04:00

The London Chamber of Commerce has named Cyborg Trading Systems the 2011 Innovation Award winner as part of its annual Business Achievement Awards.

The Growth of High Frequency Trading

2011-03-22T13:00:00.003-04:00

The following exhibits display the growth and trends in trading activity driven in part by HFT:

Refer to the original article 'Rise of the Machines: Check out these HFT Charts' from the Wall Street Journal.

The War of the Microsecond: Automated Trading from a Technical Perspective

2011-02-11T12:00:00.002-05:00

What exactly is required in order to successfully develop a system that can compete in volatile markets?

In order to gain a competitive advantage in today’s financial markets, automated trading systems must be able to process events, make decisions and issue the necessary trades with microsecond latency. These systems must be flexible and capable of rapidly adapting to changing requirements, especially in highly volatile and stressed markets. They must also be resilient to unexpected disconnects. With millions of dollars flowing through these systems at any given time, this is mission critical software built to the same standards as medical and flight control systems.

Development with a deep focus on multi-threading, parallelization, componentization and aggressive refactoring is a prerequisite. Quality, defined as correctness and robustness, can’t be maintained through offline scenario testing with pre-recorded market data alone. Extensive live testing in real time is absolutely necessary to meet the uncompromising requirements of high frequency traders, as they battle over every last microsecond.

High-frequency Traders Changing the Game

2011-02-09T16:22:00.003-05:00

Cyborg Trading Systems' CFO Ben Bittrolff discusses high frequency trading: Globe and Mail: Trading

Anti-gaming for TSX Market Makers

2011-02-08T12:36:00.004-05:00

Cyborg Trading Systems was recently featured in an article by Markets Media Online, discussing market makers and gaming. Follow the link to view the full article: Markets Media Online

Microsoft Earnings Leak: Information is Everything

2011-01-28T16:50:00.003-05:00

Meet the Microsoft Earnings Leaker: Selerity

“We were obviously surprised, but it was in a public area of the website and it was a valid earnings release,” –Ryan Terpstra, CEO

Selerity, a recent startup, which gathers and converts event data into extremely low latency machine readable feeds, apparently stumbled across a draft version of the Microsoft earnings release on a public area of the Microsoft website. Selerity subscribers probably profited quite handsomely as that data was instantly fed into their algorithms and they acted before other market participants knew what hit them.

As B Striker so eloquently put in a recent comment, “Every form of arbitrage assumes a latency of sorts, latency in recognition, reaction or realization.” Here, an innovative company devised an ingenious way to scrape the internet in real-time for valuable information and managed to create an information advantage. This is how it has always been, albeit at a much different pace.
In 1815 Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo, a world changing event. Nathan Mayer Rothschild received the news a full day ahead of the government’s official messengers. He accomplished this through his private intelligence network that spanned the globe and made a fortune buying up discounted British debt before other market participants heard the news in one of the most spectacular trades of all time.

The only difference between then and now is that the dissemination of information has accelerated to the point where it is measured in milliseconds. That information advantage is just as difficult and just as expensive to secure now as it was then. Because as always, information is everything.

Did Selerity have an unfair advantage, or an information advantage stemming from their own innovation? Share your thoughts below.

Thor Kills Latency Arbitrage

2011-01-21T13:06:00.003-05:00

In "Putting the hammer to high frequency traders", the Royal Bank of Canada describes their new technology to combat “HFT”. The arrival of Thor is just another shot fired in an ever accelerating technology arms race. The fact that such a stodgy, complacent and conservative institution as the Royal Bank of Canada is the one firing the shot should raise more than a few eyebrows. When the least innovative firms are finally forced to adapt to the new status quo, it signals the imminent final arbitrage of that particular opportunity out of existence.

If even the least savviest firms are finally measuring order travel time, implementing timing delays and thus staggering orders to arrive simultaneously, then latency arbitrage may indeed finally die as a viable trading strategy.

However, to equate latency arbitrage with high frequency trading in its entirety is a serious mistake. In the world of trade automation, high frequency and low latency aren’t the only requirements. Complexity and flexibility are just as important, and far more difficult to neutralize.

The more a strategy relies on high frequency and low latency, the more complexity and flexibility is necessarily sacrificed. Consequently, these strategies are quite generic and well understood by all competing participants. The only differentiation possible then is latency. You only get to the profit if you get there first. In this world, second place doesn’t even get a prize.

If latency arbitrage has finally been arbitraged away, then the battle simple moves up the complexity and flexibility curve where things get quite a bit more difficult to “beat”.

Is latency arbitrage on its way out? What impact will RBC's Thor have on the trading technology arms race? Leave your comments below!

Cyborg Trading Systems on the Business News Network

2011-01-14T09:37:00.001-05:00

James McInnes, CEO, Cyborg Trading Systems was recently invited onto the Business News Network to discuss how day trading has evolved with technology. Follow the link to view the full video: Cyborg Trading Systems on BNN

Rise of the Machines: The Markets Will Never Be the Same Again

2011-01-07T14:45:00.003-05:00

The competition within global financial markets has always been extremely aggressive and with the introduction of electronic trading technology; new advancements, toolsets and automation have become a critical advantage in this competitive marketplace.

"High frequency trading firms, which represent approximately 2% of the 20,000 or so trading firms operating in the US markets today, account for 73% of all US equity trading volume. These companies include proprietary trading desks for a small number of major investment banks, less than 100 of the most sophisticated hedge funds and hundreds of the most secretive prop shops, all of which operate with one thing in mind—capture profit opportunities by being smarter and faster than the closest competition." -Zero Hedge, Goldman's $4 Billion High Frequency Trading Wildcard. 07/17/2009

Programmed algorithms now drive the majority of trades on US exchanges. Fueled by market data, successful algorithms are capable of complex event processing. To gain a competitive advantage they must be able to process events, make decisions and issue the necessary trades with microsecond latency. These systems must be flexible and capable of rapidly adapting to changing requirements, especially in highly volatile and stressed markets. They must also be resilient to unexpected disconnects. With millions of dollars flowing through these systems at any given time, this is mission critical software built to the same standards as medical and flight control systems.

Globally, from Wall Street to Canary Warf, it is the largest financial players that also happen to be the most sophisticated. They have the resources to develop the requisite trade automation technologies to support their own trading strategies. By combining their traders with large teams of developers, they have been able to successfully automate their trading operations. The strategies are programmed by the developers and tested by the traders. Consequently, the development cycle is quite long, lasting months and years. The changing marketplace requires constant modifications that can take similar amounts of time. Primarily, these firms have specialized in executing their trades at extremely fast speeds giving them an advantage over the marketplace and generating significant profits.

Like it or not, for better or worse; there is no turning back the clock. Technology relentlessly marches on.

Algorithms Accelerate the Day Trading Game

2010-12-02T13:16:00.005-05:00

Cyborg Trading Systems was recently featured in the Investing section of the Globe and Mail. Follow the link provided to read the full article: The Globe and Mail: Active Investing

Speed Demons

2010-10-15T14:49:00.007-04:00

Cyborg Trading Systems has been featured in Business London Magazine. Follow the link provided to read the full story: Speed Demons

Layout Manager

2010-10-15T14:42:00.003-04:00

Cyborg Trader^TM now offers traders the ability to save their custom layouts using the new Layout Manager.

The Layout Manager is located under settings on the Cyborg Trader^TM Toolbar.

• When saving custom layouts, it is a good idea to use names that allow you to easily differentiate between the layouts.

• After layouts are created, simply select the desired layout and load it from this window.

Options Trading

2010-07-09T15:53:00.002-04:00

Traders now have access to all of Cyborg Trader^TM’s features when trading options, as well as equities. Simply add the option contract into the Cyborg Trader^TM product list, change the product type to ‘Option’ and enjoy the advantages of using Cyborg Trader^TM.

Cancel Orders Based on Depth

2010-07-09T15:13:00.004-04:00

Cyborg Trader^TM now offers traders the ability to cancel bids or offers based on the number of shares that are present at the top of book. Cyborg Trader^TM’s depth threshold technology monitors the size posted on the bid or offer of a price level. If the number of shares posted at a given price reduces by a specified amount (or percentage) the order is cancelled. This gives traders the opportunity to be filled on the bid/offer while they are close to the front of the queue without having stocks trade through their price level.

Level Manager

2010-07-09T11:45:00.017-04:00

Cyborg Trader^TM has a new and improved central command called the ‘Level Manager’. The new features added to the Level Manager are detailed below.

Robustness – Launch dozens of different trades in an instant with Cyborg Trader^TM's new Level Manager window.

Flag – Group a specific number of levels together and launch them simultaneously with the ‘Launch Flagged’ button.

Direction Lock – Ensure that your trade will only ever execute in the direction that you specify. This new feature is perfect for fast markets.

Price Lock – Enter an exact price to execute at, or simply specify that you wish to execute from the best bid, or the best ask. Cyborg Trader^TM’s allocation tree structure and trade management components will handle the rest.

View – Watch the location of your breakout entries and exit stops move dynamically, in real time with the View button.

Filled – Sort your trades using the ‘Filled’ column, allowing you to keep track of all active positions.

Increased Interaction Option

2009-12-16T12:33:00.003-05:00

We've added an option to ignore manually cancelled Cyborg orders. This allows you to interact more with a Cyborg strategy without cancelling all of the orders that Cyborg has placed. Under settings-->general there is a new check box called "Ignore manually cancelled orders". This option is by default unchecked, so if you like having Cyborg cancel all orders when you cancel one then you can keep this unchecked. If you require more interaction with a Cyborg strategy then you can check this option. If you need to stop a whole Cyborg strategy, then you can still do this through the Watch List.

Custom Cyborg Destinations

2009-12-15T10:02:00.003-05:00

We have released a new feature that allows you to create custom destinations, based on your current default destination list. You can then use this destination anywhere in Cyborg, just like a regular destination. Custom destinations allow you to place orders on many other destinations at once, as displayed in the picture below. When creating a custom destination, you specify what percent of the order you want on each destination. So in the example below, my order is split into three different parts. You can then order the destinations with the up-down buttons. The priority allows you to control what destination orders will go out on when partial fills come in, or if your order size isn't large enough to split across all destinations. The order reject destination, allows you to specify another destination in-case any orders are rejected in your destination list.

Expanded Hotkeys

2009-12-14T20:06:00.005-05:00

We have extended the ability to use Cyborg hot-keys without needing to use a prefix (such as CTRL and ALT). This will make it easier and faster, to launch your favorite algorithms right on your Level II trading screen. However, when using a hot-key without a pre-fix, that key will be controlled by Cyborg on a Windows-level scope. This means that if you assign the letter Q to a Cyborg algorithm, you will not be able to type the letter Q in any other program in Windows. If you need to turn off the Cyborg hot-keys and regain control of the keys for any reason, you can now easily do this by going to settings-->hot-keys and then right click on the hot-key list and choose Disable hot-keys. Click again on Disable, and it will become unchecked, re-enabling your hot-keys.

New Unit Types

2009-12-11T18:15:00.005-05:00

After a lot of requests from our users. We have put in the ability to select a unit type for profit orders, timed exits and stop orders. This will be available in the next release due out Dec. 14.

The available unit types are: PRICES, PERCENT and DOLLARS. These three unit types are found in the Exit Allocation of the Allocation Tree, as displayed in the picture below.

The default will be prices, which will work just how cyborg has always worked, so if you are happy with your allocation trees, nothing will change.

The percent option is based on the price of the stock and allows you to place exit orders a certain percent away from entry. The percent is based on the entry price, and you can specify up to the 100th of a percent. So for example, if you set 0.2 percent on the profit strategy, then you will have a 2 cent profit order on an entry at 10 dollars and a 4 cent profit order on an entry at 20 dollars.

The dollar option is based on position size, and allows you to place exit orders a certain dollar amount from your entry. So for example if you have a 10 dollar profit strategy, then your order will be placed 10 cents from entry with 100 shares, and 1 cent from entry with 1000 shares.

The percent and dollar units are particularly useful if you are automating signals from one of our signal providers such as Trade-Ideas or Madscan. This will allow you to greatly reduce the number of allocations trees needed. For example, since each signal coming in can be from a different stock, using the percent option can help to normalize your trading strategy.

New Version

2009-12-03T17:38:00.004-05:00

The new Cyborg version released today requires all Cyborg-Sterling users to upgrade to Sterling version 5.4.1, which can be downloaded from the Sterling website located here:
http://sterlingtrader.com/download.php

Sterling has created a faster way for Cyborg to issue automated orders, and our order entry is significantly faster now with the new version of Sterling (sub-millisecond). This will make a big difference in reducing stop slippage and in executing many orders at once.

Smart Spread Cross Offset

2009-11-11T09:29:00.003-05:00

The smart spreader has an added column that will allow you to specify the amount of slippage you are willing to take when hedging one of the legs in a spread. To use the cross offset, you must select the hedge type as a LIMIT and then you can select an offset from 0-100. An offset of zero will cross at the best bid if the leg needs to sell, and will cross at the best offer if the leg needs to buy. The offset will put a buy order higher then the best offer and a sell order lower then the best bid by the amount specified in the offset.

Enhanced Product Name Support

2009-11-11T09:03:00.002-05:00

We have added the ability to add products with a "/" in the name, or various other characters used in naming an equity product. This is also useful for adding products for different exchanges, such as the TSX.

Shake Improvements

2009-11-03T08:55:00.001-05:00

The next version (due out this week) will have some improvements to the shake.

1. A new checkbox called Allow Interaction. This will allow you to cancel shake orders and still have the algorithm keep running. This was done to allow manual interaction with the shake, and on-the fly modifications to how it behaves.

2. Modification to Start with Fill check-box when it's UNCHECKED. When Start with fill is unchecked, it used to place your shake stack order from the best bid or best offer. Now it places the stack orders from the price you entered. This will allow you to set specific areas where you want the shake to get you into a position.

3. Monitor the shake from the watch list. You can now monitor all of your shakes from the watch list. This will allow you to easily stop or flatten a shake and have a better overview when you are running multiple shakes on one product.

Hope everyone finds these new features useful!

New BOSX Trigger Condition

2009-10-30T16:49:00.000-04:00

We have released a new feature that will allow you to remove liquidity (fire a trigger) if the BOSX ECN goes away. Now why is this useful and why would you want to do this?

On many stocks, the BOSX ECN is a leading indicator of when a certain price point is going to trade through. Logically this makes sense, because BOSX is free to hit and therefore it is usually the first ECN that will get cleared just before the level trades through.

To give our customers an even bigger advantage, we allow you to attach this to your current triggers as an OR condition. So for example you can fire a stop when BOSX goes away OR the depth on the level goes below some threshold. Here is a screenshot of the BOSX condition used in the Cyborg Trigger Complex configuration window.

In The Media...

2009-10-29T18:30:00.000-04:00

Our CFO, Ben Bittrolff was recently featured in the Globe and Mail, Canada's largest newspaper. Here is the story:

Rise of the kitchen table traders

Theresa Ebden

Special to The Globe and MailPublished on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 12:00AM EDTLast updated on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 3:49PM EDT

The meteoric rise of stocks so far this year has summoned the decade-old spirit of a past rally: the day trader.

A 57 per cent gain in the S&P 500 Index since March has made it more tempting to flip equities from the home computer. But it was the big rout that preceded this rally that sparked the interest, said Ben Bittrolff, 30, a seasoned day trader who says he is up 373 per cent on the year.

"All the way down, advisers were telling people to hang on. These guys told them, 'Don't worry, it will come back,' " he said. "Then people said, "Why am I paying an adviser 2 per cent and he's got me in RIM and I'm losing money? I can just do that myself.' And that's how they start migrating to day trading."

But this time is different, said Mr. Bittrolff, who stayed at the table long after the tech stock collapse of 2000 and the crash after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States. He now helps to run a company that sells trading software to day traders, and has noticed a rising interest in the products.

"Day trading has evolved. It's a technological arms race, and computers play a far more dominant role in day trading now," said Mr. Bittrolff, who is chief financial officer of Cyborg Trading Systems Inc. in London, Ont.

But the game has changed in the nine years since The Globe and Mail last profiled him in 2000, when at the tender age of 21 he was trading stocks all day and said that he was completing his full-time economics and finance degree "on the side" at Wilfrid Laurier University.

“This world is not for the casual guy who thinks he can beat Wall Street, because he can't. ”— Ben Bittrolff, CFO of Cyborg Trading Systems

Once he graduated in 2002, he and his winnings headed to Swift Trade Inc. to work as a day trader. Then he moved on to a derivatives trading desk at Refco Inc. Upon the firm's collapse amid an accounting scandal, Mr. Bittrolff enrolled in an MBA at Laurier, then managed a trading floor at CFT Financial until February of 2008, when he recognized an even better way to make money from the day-trading business.

The recent rise in day trading has created demand for software that serves high-frequency independent traders. Mr. Bittrolff's product, which launched in September, is similar to that of big firms that use "black box" investing principles - a computer-based model that analyzes data feeds and executes trades automatically. However, it allows the user to customize the data using Dow Jones feeds as well as manage objectives and trading actions through partnerships with specialized high-speed trading platforms.

For this, customers pay between $250 and $375 a month. Cyborg has seven employees, is not yet profitable, and represents "a partnership between the trader, a human, and his ability to think, and the reliability and automation of a machine. What we're trying to do is take the best traits from each party," Mr. Bittrolff says.

That is what it takes to succeed at day trading now, he says, adding that just as before, some day traders will go down in flames.

"It is not for everybody, it is actually for very few people. Would you like to live a very stressful life, in an environment that changes so rapidly, there's no right answer?" he asks. "This world is not for the casual guy who thinks he can beat Wall Street, because he can't."

For now, Mr. Bittrolff day trades mainly to test his software. For his own serious investing activity, he has slightly longer-term horizons: He owns a condo, which he shares with his wife, who is pregnant with their first child.

“You start to believe your own predictive powers. I think day trading is right, but for the right person.”— Patricia Lovett-Reid

"Day trading has its sacrifices - no, I'm not living with my parents, but it's about making lots of money, not knowing when it will stop, then having it stop. Then it might start again. It's a massively variable income," he said.

Day trading can be exciting at first, but with poor timing or preparation the result can be trouble, says Patricia Lovett-Reid, a certified financial planner and senior vice-president at TD Waterhouse Group Inc.

"I worry about early successes, and about early gains," she said. "You start to believe your own predictive powers. I think day trading is right, but for the right person."

Ms. Lovett-Reid said she was approached by a savvy woman recently after giving a talk in Oakville, Ont. The investor had recently begun to day trade, using a portion of her savings to do so. This person was well aware of the risks, and was taking the right approach.

Preparing a plan, setting aside large amounts of time each day, and using third-party research - fundamentals, as well as technical analysis - are keys to success, Ms. Lovett-Reid said.

Even so, she recommends extreme caution.

"An active trader at home has to realize they are trading against the big banks' own trading floors, who have the latest information, the best software and technology," she says.

"So if you're acting on news you heard yesterday, everybody already has that and has acted on it already."

Even so, newbie day traders are increasingly emboldened. Even those looking to "swing trade" over slightly longer periods - days, weeks and sometimes months - are on the rise, especially with exchange-traded funds that mirror the movement of an underlying commodity by two or three times the price, says Questrade chief executive officer Edward Kholodenko.

"I have seen it, particularly with leveraged ETFs," he said, adding that these funds' ability to make long or short bets [for or against] a particular commodity, such as gold, is a popular feature with day traders.

As for the proving grounds for a day trader, he has succinct advice:

"If they don't understand, it's like anything. Some people don't understand business, but it doesn't always stop them from opening one. ...

"But then the market takes care of itself."

Genesis Platform Now Supported

2009-10-29T12:21:00.001-04:00

We are proud to announce that Cyborg Trading Systems has added support for the Genesis Laser Trading Platform. We are currently in beta release, so please be aware that there may be some bugs in the early stages of release. In order to setup the genesis platform for Cyborg, you must do the following:

1. Contact genesis and get another User name for your current account. You need to ensure that Genesis links this user name to your current Genesis account. This will be used for Cyborg to log into Genesis Laser.

2. Use your current user name to log into laser where you will monitor and interact with Cyborg.

3. When you install Cyborg, choose the platform as genesis and then you must enter in the proper server settings, along with the extra user name you got from genesis.

We are looking forward to allowing Genesis users to access our Grey-Box automated tool-set.

Long Sale Violoations Work-Around

2009-10-29T10:15:00.001-04:00

We have released a new feature that allows a trader to better manage problems with the long-sale violation rule when trading equities.

A long sale violation happens when brokers put specific rules on an equity account that prevents a trader from placing more sell orders then the current net long position. This is done to prevent traders from shorting stocks that they aren't supposed to, by entering more orders in the market when they are long, so they can get short later. However, it has the bad side effect of forcing traders to cancel all profit orders before issuing a stop on a trade. This can be a very time consuming and dangerous, since a trader's stop could get rejected due to a long-sale violation if orders are still in the market.

Cyborg now has a feature that will automatically cancel all profit orders managed by Cyborg if the market gets within a certain distance from a stop. This eliminates the need for traders to manually cancel profit orders before getting out of a trade. We are confident that this feature will lead to better risk management for traders with this restriction on their accounts.

This feature can be found in the settings-->general section in Cyborg.

The Changing Face of Trading

2009-10-23T13:49:00.000-04:00

I thought I would start out this blog with a video clip of a new movie coming out called Floored. It is the story about change. About how change is coming all around us, especially in the world of finance. I started the software company called Cyborg Trading Systems to help direct and lead this change in financial markets. I hope to show people that there is indeed a bright future to working WITH computer trading systems and not against them.