We don't try to keep up with everyone offering a Trading System or an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, so we don't try to make direct comparisons to any specific competitor. Frankly, we've seen a lot of competitors come and go through the years, and keeping up with them would be a hopeless task. We believe that we have no real competitors anyway, because although some systems offer some parts of the NeuroShell Trader Professional (NSTP), we don't believe any system comes close to offering such a complete, integrated package. So consider these 15 facts when making a decision about your trading software:

1. Ward Systems Group has been in business since 1982, and has been producing software with neural nets and other artificial intelligence (AI) since 1988. From the introduction of our first general purpose neural net software in 1988, we have been involved with the use of AI in trading. No other current AI trading company has this much experience. Experience obviously matters, because in Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities magazine, the NeuroShell Trader Professional was rated #1 for Artificial Intelligence Trading Software in the annual Readers' Choice Awards competition for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010.
   
   
2. Many software companies consist mostly of an entrepreneur selling software on the side while he/she holds down a full time job elsewhere. Their wife or father-in-law answers the phone in their house. Some of these companies only have a fancy web site and email - no phone number, no address. Some are actually operating out of third world countries including Uzbekistan (yes, really!), but have proxy addresses and phone numbers elsewhere. Ward Systems Group, Inc. owns its own office in a real brick and mortar office complex which is staffed with full time employees. Here is a picture of our offices in Frederick, Maryland, USA:
   
   
   
   
3. Even if you aren't a "daytrader", you will appreciate that we have a daytrading version you can upgrade to if you want. Firstly, even "end-of-day position traders" eventually want to enter and exit the market at advantageous times during the day. You don't have to be a daytrader to appreciate that. Secondly, if you start making enough money with the NeuroShell Trader Professional, you MAY want to become a DayTrader, instead of facing your boss and that commute every day! Buy software that gives you that option - most artificial intelligence software does not have intraday capabilities.
   
   
4. The NSTP has over 800 technical indicators, including rules, position and equity information, arithmetic and trig functions, wavelets, fast Fourier transforms, and principal component analysis. The parameters of all of these indicators can be optimized in our powerful genetic algorithm optimizer, with or without neural nets.
   
   
5. The Indicator Wizard allows you to build new indicators based upon our standard ones, which can be saved and distributed. Some of our 800 indicators (like rules) promote this building process. If you need a programming language, the NSTP will even call DLLs that you program with C, Delphi, or Power Basic.
   
   
6. The NSTP trains multiple issues automatically with the same nets and indicators. You just put them in as different pages of the same chart and anything you do to one happens to all issues automatically.
   
   
7. The NSTP allows you to set up complex trading strategies, optimizes them with the genetic algorithm and back tests, showing buy/sell points, drawdowns, etc. In fact, you don't even have to have nets in these strategies. Or you can have multiple nets working together! Some other systems cannot do these things.
   
   
8. The Trader reads files from MetaStock, AIQ, and CSI. It also reads text files which most download services can provide. We also offer a built-in Dial/Data downloader for end of day data, plus the software can access intraday data from DTN, Interactive Brokers and eSignal.com.
   
   
9. The NSTP has lots of other things Traders will appreciate, like the ability to build trading systems with stop orders, limit orders, stop limit orders, and trailing stops. You can even optimize these!
   
   
10. We do our own neural network research. Our newest net type, Turboprop 2, is probably the best net on the planet. It is very fast. Most nets train on old 500MHZ machines in 5-20 seconds. No network based on the now very old backprop paradigm or genetic algorithms can come close to these nets. Why is speed important? Because when you are optimizing, you may be training hundreds or even thousands of neural nets, which would literally be impossible with the old backpropagations neural network algorithm.
    
    
11. Turboprop 2 is very accurate (assuming you have relevant inputs of course), and it gives you a numeric contribution value for each input, so you can intelligently decide amongst inputs. The genetic algorithm will also help you decide. Turboprop 2 also has mechanisms to help prevent overfitting. You don't need a "test" set plus a "validation" or "evaluation" set to prevent overfitting with Turboprop 2. Turboprop 2 can also train on the basis of increasing profit as well as reducing error.
    
    
12. Turboprop 2 has no parameters whatsoever to tweak to make the net run, and therefore it needs no time consuming genetic algorithm to configure it. No need to be a neural network expert; inserting a neural network prediction is as easy as inserting an indicator.
    
    
13. We don't hype that you will make money with the NSTP, because our system allows you to build your OWN systems. If you want a turnkey moneymaker, buy from one of the other vendors who will tell you their system will make you rich quick. We let our users do our hyping (see the Real Traders section of our webpage).
    
    
14. We and other independent companies offer "addons" for the NSTP which provide a rich variety of additional indicators, including many more types of neural networks.
    
    
15. You can call or email us and actually get technical support. You won't have to pay for support contracts, or worry about long waits to get help. Emails are normally answered in one business day. You won't get cut off after 30 days, either!