EdgeWare FastBreak Pro Version 6.2 - Manual (Page 5)

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2.0 Introduction
Edge Ware, Inc. released the initial Standard FastBreak version in early 1996 to allow
investors to design, evaluate and trade fund rotation investment strategies.
An early
version of Standard FastBreak was reviewed in the July 1999 issue of Technical
Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES, the premier technical analysis investment
magazine. Their review, in part, said, “This is easily the most elaborate fund switching
software we’ve run across, and it’d be worth the time to check it out.” FastBreak Pro is
“light years” more advanced that the version reviewed by the magazine. FastBreak Pro
was introduced in early 2000 and the reception by professional and individual investors
has been overwhelming.
Since the initial release of Standard FastBreak, the number of available options and
parameters for building strategies has increased dramatically.
This has made it
increasingly time consuming for those users who want to build complex trading strategies
that take advantage of all the new features.
Many users requested the capability to
optimize FastBreak trading systems by exhaustive evaluation of all the parameters
available in FastBreak. This is not practical because of the almost unlimited combination
of parameters. There is also the significant problem of “over-optimization” of parameters
that can lead to fantastic historical performance but poor future predictive performance.
The problem of optimizing a complex, multivariable problem is very difficult. Most
optimization routines have the undesirable characteristic of finding “local” solutions
rather than a “global” solution, that is to say, they find good (local) solutions but not the
best (global) solution. Then there is the added issue of over-optimization. Edge Ware
investigated various methodologies to help automate this process and determined that a
“Genetic Algorithm” provides the best solution.
Genetic Algorithms are a relatively new branch of mathematics. They are a very
powerful technique, but at the same time users don’t need to know all the details of how
the process works. We have tried to make FastBreak Pro as close to a “push the button”
program as possible with little interaction required from the user. Using only the default
parameters you should be able to develop very effective trading systems.
Edge Ware, Inc
* FastBreak Pro relies on the Investors FastTrack database. For those not familiar with
FastTrack, it is a mutual fund/stock database and software analysis package.
The
database is updated each day the market is open with the closing prices of thousands of
mutual funds, stocks, and indexes. Users of FastBreak must be subscribers of FastTrack
(call 800-749-1348 or visit www.fasttrack.net) to access the required data. Do not call
FastTrack for information relating to Edge Ware products.