Why was Trading System Lab formed?
Trading System Lab was formed to fill the need for improved design techniques of mechanical Trading Strategies. From the time early computers were directed towards the discovery of financial market algorithms, researchers and developers have focused on the use of Artificial Intelligence as a means to enhance performance. Many of these early attempts failed to produce results. Consequently, many developers returned to manual design approaches, supported with theoretical foundations from filter theory, stochastic calculus and quantitative analysis. This manual design approach remains prolific today even though machine design approaches have permeated many other complex areas such as engineering, pharmacology, underground mapping, tumor classification, environmental engineering, and business prediction. TSL's belief is that there is no reason why manual design approaches should drive Trading Strategy design moving forward. The recent stock and credit market meltdowns have shown, once again, that traditional long only money management suffers severe downside risk, forcing the implementation of Trading Strategies. This continues to drive a ongoing, determined effort to enhance the design of Trading Strategies for High Frequency and longer term trading models. As evident by the high attrition rate of Hedge Funds, clearly there is a need for tooling that supports the strategy designer. Cautiously, over the past 10 years, several developers have reignited the interest in AI with the application of "algorithms that write algorithms" directed at financial markets thanks to recent innovations in machine learning. This effort has produced the first high speed "smart designer" algorithm that provides for the automated, rapid design of financial Trading Models. Recent use of this technology has initiated a paradigm shift with machine designs outpacing human designs in independent testing.
Michael L. Barna, Trading System Lab's Founder
Michael L. Barna is Trading System Lab's founder and President. Mike received a Master of Science in Astronautical and Aeronautical Engineering from Stanford University and specialized in advanced guidance and control systems. His background includes positions in hedge funds, managed account funds and engineering and management positions at several large aerospace defense firms where he developed ramjet, and space based laser defense systems. His work included the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms as a means to enhance various guidance and control systems.
Mr. Barna has utilized similar AI techniques in the design of modern Trading Systems and has pioneered AI and Trading System integration. Mike has created numerous popular and successful Trading Systems that are employed by fund managers, brokerage houses and traders worldwide. His Legacy Trading System "Big Blue" is ranked one of the Top Ten Trading Systems of All Time as published in the Book: "The Ultimate Trading Guide", by Hill, Pruitt and Hill. Mr. Barna is the creator and author of one of the most popular Legacy daytrading systems ever written, The RMESA Trading System, which is his first trading system to include a basic Neural Network approximation filter. His original RMESA3 daytrading system remains today, 10 years following its deployment, one of the highest ranked daytrading system since release date.
Mike's background includes airline captain and flying management positions at one of the largest international airlines in the world. Mr. Barna's associations include Mesa Software and Alfaranda Systems. Mr. Barna has provided more Futures Truth top ranked trading systems than any other developer in the country. Mike is a TradeStation™ Open Platform developer and has produced Trading Systems and Indicators for TradeStation™ for over 10 years. Previously, he was the Vice President of Regency Stocks and Commodities Fund, LP where his mechanical trading systems were employed to manage the firm's futures portfolio. His work has been published in numerous books and journals on Trading Systems. Mike holds or has held 10 FAA pilot ratings or licenses, 2 commodity licenses and a California State Realtors license. Mike is an tournament level, indoor 4 wall handball player with Canadian National and California State Championship titles. Mr. Barna resides in Northern California with his family where he works closely with several other top programmers, traders and money managers, on the use of Genetic Programming for the Automatic Creation of Trading Systems.