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 the 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 financial problem. After going through the Lockheed management for approval I sent an unsolicited proposal to Robert Prechter. His company Elliott Wave International (EWI) advertises that it is the world’s largest market forecasting firm.

 

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. I spent 1986 through 1999 working on EWAVES. It was a lengthy process. As the project progressed we added more features and modules and automated more of the functionality.

 

During this time I was assigned to extract ALL of the useful Elliott Wave Principle information I could observe or glean from Robert Prechter himself, his newsletters, books, tapes etc and incorporate this information into EWAVES.

 

All missing logic (like “where do I start counting”) was identified and reasonable approaches programmed. All rules and guidelines have been documented. Many of these had never been written down anywhere else before.

 

Consequently EWAVES is a successful application of the Elliott Wave Principle. It identifies where the price is in the unfolding fractal pattern thereby permitting the forecasting of future market movement. In fact because the computer can apply all rules and guidelines consistently and dispassionately, EWAVES can outperform human analysts. There have been many skeptics that argued that Elliott Waves were only a figment of the imagination of the analyst. EWAVES is a cold calculating machine without emotion. It was later used to perform an extensive study showing there was convincing evidence that Elliott Waves are for real. Not an illusion in the eye of the beholder.

 

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.

For the next three and one-half years I took time off from Elliott Wave International Inc. to study, learn, and contemplate my future. During this time I read all the books and magazines I could find on market forecasting indicators, trading and portfolio management. I passed the series 3 tests and registered as a CTA. Because of my background I wanted to build the best trading software anywhere, I began building trading systems for ExitPoints.com.

Meanwhile EWI’s attempt at exploiting EWAVES for profits was becoming elusory. As such it was still missing one critical part to make money in the markets. It needed a mechanical means to take the Elliott Wave information and convert it into trading signals that could be applied to any freely traded market. In other words it needed
a highly sophisticated trading system that was based upon decades of price data from scores of freely traded markets both domestic and foreign. The Elliott Wave based system had to be adaptable to multiple time frames and applicable to futures, ETFs, cash Forex, and even individual stocks.

In 2003 I returned to EWI to incorporate all the new research findings regarding the Elliott Wave Principle I had recently discovered.  Afterward I designed and developed an artificial intelligent trading module for EWAVES. Sometime soon EWI will be using this system as the basis for some of their products. Finally they have a way to exploit the capabilities of EWAVES.

During the past dozen years I have been moonlighting with ExitPoints.com (with permission of EWI). Having finished the Elliott Wave based trading system for EWI in February 2013, I left EWI. I am now focused full time on the trading systems at ExitPoints.com. ExitPoints has very consistent and robust day, swing, and position time frame systems for the futures markets. All systems have been developed with decades of price data and scores of markets. All my skill as a statistician, knowledge engineer, and commodities analyst has been poured into the ExitPoints systems. They are as robust as I can make them.