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At 9:34 PM -0500 8/30/01, Clyde Lee wrote:
>Don't be in too big a hurry to scratch Omega/TRAD as I have yet to
>find anything that allows me to develop ideas as easily as in
>TradeStation.
I agree. Too bad the supplier of the product is killing it.
Picture this.
You have a company that is selling a product that has turned out to
be the industry standard for developing and testing trading systems
and indicators.
The original architecture of the product was very clever and was
nearly perfectly matched with the customer's problem so it became the
platform of choice over many years.
In spite of totally abysmal quality control and horrendous customer
service, you still have a virtual monopoly with no competitive
product anywhere close to the same capabilities.
There are thousands of programs available to customers written in
your proprietary language that customers can easily get to experiment
with.
The market is growing since more and more people are understanding
that the buy/hold mentality that worked for the past 20 years isn't
working any more. They want more active management of their money and
most now have personal computers.
All brokers would love to be able to provide such a tool to their
customers and would gladly provide an interface between such a tool
and their order entry system.
You would think that anybody who had such a company would "think he
had died and gone to Heaven".
But no. They decide to throw all that away and become an on-line
broker, trying to compete with well funded giants such as Schwab,
Fidelity, Ameritrade, etc., all of whom happen to be laying off
people by the thousands.
By deciding to compete, they cut off potential sales through all
existing brokers who could have been a massive sales force promoting
their product.
By discontinuing to sell the product, they force all customers to
start looking for another product - no one want to be stuck without
support. This also cuts off the only existing source of revenue.
This also sends a clear message to potential suppliers that the
customer base is up for grabs so potential competitors redouble their
efforts.
Someone must have a death wish...
TRAD stock is again near it's all time low of about $2.50 so the
stockholders are voting - with their feet...
But perhaps we are missing something and this is really a brilliant
strategy in disguise...
Bob Fulks
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