David T. Register

During my long twisting and winding career I have been very fortunate to have acquired the experiences and skills that make me uniquely qualified to develop expert trading systems that are mechanical, artificially intelligent, and perform extraordinarily well across thirty-one futures markets. Yes, all my recommendations are produced by computer. There is no discretion whatsoever. All trading rules and trade management has been conveyed in writing to the brokers managing the trades. They know exactly what to do under all circumstances.

My advanced education began at North Carolina State University at Raleigh back in September of 1965. The first two years I majored in mathematics. Then I switched to physics and graduated with honors in May 1969. For the next two years I attended the graduate school in physics. But I could see that I really wanted to do something else. In 1973 I entered the graduate school in Statistics and really loved it. I was awarded a Master's degree in Statistics in 1974. Through my contacts with other students in the statistics dept, I was offered a position as an assistant scientist with Lockheed Electronics Co. a subsidiary of Lockheed Corp. The job was at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. I was joining a team of scientists and engineers determined to do something never accomplished before or since. We designed an implemented a system based on satellite imagery from the Landsat Satellites to make forecasts of the Russian wheat crop. The program was initially called LACIE for Large Area Crop Inventory Experiment. After about 3 years they changed the name to AgriStars. It was a joint project with NOAA, NASA, and the USDA. In a nutshell we were successful but it was declared too expensive and dismantled. During this time I learned a great deal about pattern recognition. I also wanted to continue my academic education and I attended night classes in graduate statistics at The University of Texas Heath Science Center located at MD Anderson Hospital. This way I picked up another year of graduate courses in statistics beyond the Master's degree. But as I said there were twists and turns in my career.

When the AgriStars program ended I was transferred to assist Dr. Jack Waggoner a PhD psychologist. We were given the task of designing a management information system for the Shuttle Program general manager. We developed a means where he could visually see all his shuttles and know their status with one quick glance at his status board each day. Jack referred to it as Dwell Spot Technology. I heard that they planned to make an electronic version of it. But I left the project before that occurred.

I was appointed the manager of the Shuttle Tape Recorder Laboratory. I did not repair the recorders myself but my knowledge of physics and statistics were very helpful in designing management information systems for NASA. I developed tools and software for the status and management of the shuttle recorders. These were million dollar black boxes that would record all the data, voice, and payload data during the flights. It was critical that they worked properly for the success of the missions. The tools I developed were to be sure to flag when a recorder needed to be exercised, or maintenance performed, or if it was time to ship to the Cape for insertion in the next shuttle mission, and if they needed to be sent to Odetics in California for extensive repair. My engineers and technicians could do minor maintenance in our Laboratory in Houston. After about two years everything was running smoothly and all the software and status systems designed and implemented. It was time to move on. I needed another challenge.

As luck would have it one of my old friends and department manager from my LACIE days was starting a new group at Lockheed that was going to specialize in expert system development. This is one of the five main branches of artificial intelligence. An expert system is a computer program that can mimic the decision making skill of one or more experts in a field of endeavor. This was so new that Lockheed was not able to go out and hire the necessary skills. So they decided to pick some of their best scientists and engineers and train them. I immediately volunteered and was selected to be one of these founding members. We were provided a full year of training. Some of the training was self study. Some involved classes in Los Angeles, CA. Some involved mentors that were brought in-house from time to time. We were all required to learn LISP programming language. LISP is designed for symbol processing. It had been selected as the language of choice for artificially intelligent systems developed for DARPA. It was our group's goal to submit RFP's to DARPA for funding.

Then another twist occurred. I had been interested as a private investor in stocks and futures. I dabbled in the markets. I read numerous books on market timing. In 1986 I read the Elliott Wave Principle by Frost and Prechter. Wow. This was eye opening. All the skills in pattern recognition, statistics and expert systems that I had acquired were suddenly connected and applicable to a real problem. After going through the Lockheed management for approval I sent an unsolicited proposal to Robert Prechter. I wanted to program the Elliott Wave Principle. I knew it was a long shot but I really wanted to be the one to do this. In a couple of weeks he asked me to come to Los Angeles, CA to a seminar he would be speaking at. I was able to get Lockheed to fund the trip. After his presentation we had dinner and talked about the project. About two weeks later he asked me to come to his home in Gainesville, GA to discuss it further. That was in 1986. While at Lockheed I put together a team of five scientists and we programmed the Elliott Wave Principle. It is called EWAVES. For my day job I work directly for Elliott Wave International. There is a large ongoing effort to use EWAVES to validate the Elliott Wave Principle. Someday I am sure all the years of work put into that program are going to change technical analysis.

While at EWI I was privileged to work with some of the best futures analysts in the world in my opinion. There is one in particular I wish to mention. His name is Peter DeSario. He gave me a good education in the futures markets. It was from him I obtained my love of these markets and learned that futures are the best vehicle for traders.

I left EWI in 2000 for about 3.5 years. During that time I developed my trading systems and started publication of ExitPoints.com. Now I have two jobs; EWI in the afternoon and ExitPoints.com at night. Both keep me busy.