Objectives

Alpha Trading Systems is dedicated to furthering the education of the individual investor.

We believe an individual investor has enormous potential for improving the return on his or her investments. We assist today to a movement by individuals who want to their financial future in their own hands rather than relying on mass solutions.

Whether the objective is to prepare for retirement, to fund education or to just simply realize higher returns under a controlled risk environment, we can provide tools that will allow the individual investor to improve the present performance.

In the past we have provided educational materials, seminars and similar products to the investment community.

In 1996 we published the Day Trading System for the S&P 500, a chart-based, non-mechanical approach to trading that volatile market. Although the charts in the manual are all 5-minute (we now recommend 3-minute due to the increased market volatility since the manual was written), it can be applied to any time frame. From feedback from traders we are aware they have been using 13-tick, 21-tick, 1-minute, 3-minute, 5-minute, 7-minute, 10-minute, 15-minute and 30-minute bar charts. The rules are exactly the same for each time frame but the stop we indicate in the manual is valid for 3-minute charts, larger time frames need to have the stop adjusted. About 90% of the traders were using TradeStation as their charting package.

The E-mini did not exist at the time (it was created 14 months later) but can be traded also with the same rules as the full contract (then with a value of 500 times the price, when the manual was written). This seems to attest to the validity of the approach I devised for trading the markets and also seems to confirm that it worked well in the past and should work well in the future.

In early 1998 we published the Global Trading System, applicable to any market (including Stocks or any Futures contract) in any time frame using precisely the same rules. It is also based in a similar approach to the S&P 500 system but the rules are more precise to cover trading any market. It is the system we use for selecting options stocks for our newsletters.

We received two awards in the Stocks and Commodities Magazine annual surveys in the last two years, although we are not even promoting any of the systems. Example of the charts with signals can be seen on the Charts archives. Click here if you want to see some charts and please keep in mind there is no software provided, you just need a charting software.

We also publish two newsletters on Stock Options, both with my youngest son, Paul A. Alvim.

One is called Alpha Options Newsletter, has been published once a week since April 1995 and is available only to Telescan Inc. online subscribers. Based on a starting equity of $30,000 the account would be at $199,844 with $152,526 in cash at the end of April 1999.

The other publication is the Alpha Options Report, published since June 21, 1998, sent by email only to the subscribers, on average twice a week. Starting with an equity of $20,000, the account would be at $119,844 on June 30, 1999, with a cash position of $97,057. As usual, no commissions are including in any of the above results.

Incidentally, in general our trades show an average of 50% of winners. But since these generate higher dollars of profit then are lost in the losing trades, above average results have been achieved, at least so far.

Alpha Trading Systems, P.O. Box 770729, Houston, Texas 77215