Blue Wave Trading (BWT) has been developing automated trading systems since 1997 and has become the premier developer of automated strategies in the retail side of the trading industry. We are perhaps the only fully Automated entry, exit, trail stops etc. trading strategy for Ninja Trader that not not have the dreaded overfills, in live trading that renders any strategy literally worthless, as you lose control of your strategy when this occurs. We had early success with the Tradestation™ platform, and then became an add on partner with NinjaTrader™ in 2007. Blue Wave Trading has more experience with the NinjaTrader Platform than most of our competitors as Blue Wave Trading was the 5th NinjaTrader Add on software developer in 2007. This was long before the ecosystem and the addition of hundreds of competing vendors and products. As a result of of our software being a showcase for what could be done early on in NinjaTrader history, it’s no surprise or coincidence that Blue Wave Trading has been imitated and emulated countless times by or former colleagues and competitors, but our innovative style of development and graphical presentation is the original that began in 2003, and likely created a paradigm shift in graphical presentation long before the industry became a circus of vendors overrun by internet marketers claiming to be trading experts which it seems to be now. Through all this Blue Wave Trading has received the prestigious Stocks and Commodities Readers Choice award for Trading Systems through 2014 making it 6 years in a row. As we no longer advertise with S&C we are not eligible for the Reader’s Choice vote or awards. We remain focused on innovation and improvement of our software in a dynamic and ever changing market. Blue Wave Trading has had audited and documented success with it trading systems past and present.
Blue Wave Trading Backstory and beginning
In 1980 I began my career as a financial planning professional specializing in tax sheltered investments. During this time I was self employed as a Financial Advisor and held several Securities licenses including Series 6 and 26, supervising a group of brokers. After building a thriving financial planning practice over the following 17 years, I came across a story about how a little known group of traders on computers were “stepping in front of size”, which were big orders placed by NYSE specialists. Because of their relative small size and nimble ability to buy and sell these individual traders placing the inside bid “in front of” large orders were making small fortunes on short term movement in the markets, now commonly known as “Daytrading”. Needless to say, I was fascinated by this.
I started trading stocks in 1997, when I took what was probably one of the first day trading “Webinars” as they are known today with an instant messaging program called ICQ. I thought that with my market experience trading would be “easy”… needless to say, my exuberance was quickly humbled and I took some substantial losses. However, this only strengthened my resolve to learn how those on the “inside” operated. By 1998 I was trading this “new” instrument called the E-Mini S&P on a platform called Best Direct run by Walter Bressert and now defunct PFG.
My first trading software purchase was Tradestation, shortly after it was re-invented from a program called System Writer. From day one I began to learn programming in Easy Language until I became quite proficient at it, and by Fall 1998 I became a Registered Investment Advisor, managing a small portfolio of 7.5 million dollars for my clients. I employed Mutual Fund Market Timing from simple trading models I had created in Tradestation mostly based on moving average and volatility based indicators that I had developed into a set of rules for Buy and Sell signals. In the bull market of the 90s these worked well.
In September- December of 1999, I placed 6th in an industry trading competition among 2000 competitors made up of my investment advisor peers. This earned me a cash prize of several thousand dollars and bragging rights. In early 2000, after a life changing event I realized my lifelong goal to live in Hawaii and moved to Maui, HI, where I retired from my 20+ year career as a Financial Advisor, to focus on trading in my own account and developing automated systems full time. The last trade I made for my clients was to position them in cash in late March of 2000 which was the beginning of a 3 year bear market that saw the NASDAQ decline 70% from its high near 6000.
After a few years of intense research of testing literally a thousand different trading rules and optimizing various strategies that were crunching numbers on four high-end computers running 24/7, I came up with a trading system based on floor trader pivots support and resistance zones and the probabilities of the market opening and closing within those levels or “Zones”. The system was called surprisingly, the BWT Zones SP.
I traded my own account using my Zones System full time for two years when in 2003 my broker noticed how well my account was growing and asked how I was achieving this. When I told him I was trading my own automated strategy that I had coded for my personal use only, he asked if I would make it available to other traders. Blue Wave Trading was born sometime in March, 2003.
As technology improved, Internet providers were beginning to offer higher bandwith at affordable prices, computing power advanced rapidly, and that literally changed the world as we know it, causing Intraday Trading Volume to surge dramatically.
In 2004 I submitted my Blue Wave Trading Zones System to be audited by Futures Truth Magazine. The following year the BWT Zones Trading System ranked as high as 3rd in the Top Ten SP Trading Systems in Futures Truth Magazine, and was the #1 performer at Attain Capital Mgmt. (a broker and CTA that focuses on Automated Systems Trading). At the time BWT was the subject of numerous articles pertaining to system performance and statistics.
In late 2006, long before popular trading forums and a hundreds if not a thousand new startup trading retailers, I offered the BWT Precision Indicators which at it’s core was the now the well known, BWT Precision Trend Indicator. The initial release of these indicators and the success of the BWT Zones System for Tradestation turned some heads. I had the good fortune to meet and consult with floor traders, hedge fund managers, traders of all types and was invited to visit the home offices of some well known institutions in the retail and professional trading industry. Valuable lessons were learned about what really goes on in the business of trading. The reviews were very positive and established BWT as an innovator and forward thinker in trading and analysis tools. Many former clients include a number of competitors who after working closely with BWT essentially pirated BWT Proprietary indicators and methodologies and sold them as their own which is why it is no coincidence so many competing products look like BWT, but seriously lack the ethics and hard work that created them.
Fast forward, today, in an unregulated retail trading product market, where probably 80% or more of retailers of trading products are less than a few years old, Blue Wave Trading is going strong into its 15th year with industry awards in the trading system category from Stocks and Commodities Magazine.
Since our inception, Blue Wave Trading has been an innovator in programming technical indicators and systems development. The 2006-7 debut of BWT Precision Auto Trader and BWT Precision Indicators and our visual style of development and feature set have become industry standard and influenced many.
Randy M Sarrow
CEO Blue Wave Trading Research and Development
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