Er…, John, have you thought about buying Michael Harris’s books? I ask this because, first at all, you will need them to know under what basis to operate the APS software, that is, they explain ( and very well at that!) the rationale behind building the software itself.
Secondly, there is a whole trading system and methodology (presumably the one Mr. Harris himself follows) described in them – from taking the trade itself to money management – the last book contains about 27 or 28 equations on the subject!
Of course, on the back of the books you have got an explanation (or should I say “introduction”) on who is Michael Harris.
Although I haven’t purchased the APS software itself, Mr. Harris literature contains the formulas for some patterns; I use the ones he gives for the FTSE100, and have discovered that some work very well, others not so well, and others have to be inverted, ie., although the pattern is supposed to be used to short the index, in uptrends it works much better by going long!
In addition, the patterns are very simple to program (I use MetaStock 9.0 end-of-day), and also very simple to back-test; no indicators such as RSI or ADX or Moving Averages are needed – although in his second book Mr. Harris provides one (of sorts!).
One word of advice: this system, although very well designed and presented by a man who is extremely intelligent (Michael Harris holds two master degrees) and very down to Earth (just look at his money management techniques), is no Holly Grail, and there is no guarantee that the APS patterns will be profitable on a consistent basis on the long term; in fact, you will not know when a pattern reverses from short to long until you have lost money, and with this system the drawdowns can be considerable, just back-test the patterns and you’ll see.
Eduardo.
