FAQs:

Q: How long does the Free Trial last?

A: You can try out SMR Pro for 30 days.

Q: Does it cost more to get both Stocks and Futures?

A: No, both Stocks and Futures charts are included at each of the subscription lengths: 3 months, 6 months, or 1 year.

Q: Which Futures markets do you provide charts for?

A: We cover all the major U.S. futures markets, plus a few extra, as shown here.

Q: How do you choose which Stocks to chart?

A: We cover a very wide range of US Stocks, Stock Indexes, ETFs, and ProShares. Our list is determined mainly by what our subscribers want to see. If there is any stock that trades on the NYSE or NASDAQ, and you’d like to see it charted, just request it.

Q: Will SMR Pro work on a Macintosh?

A: No, it is a Windows only program. What we suggest is to pick up a decent used Windows PC. In most places, you can find plenty of good machines for $250 or less. SMR has bought several used PCs, and SMR Pro has always worked fine on all of them. The most we ever paid was $300 for a Dell desktop with a Pentium 4 processor, keyboard, optical mouse, video camera, and a very nice Dell flat-screen monitor. There is no need to buy a brand-new one, with so many good used machines for sell these days.

Q: Can I install SMR Pro at work and at home, too?

A: Yes, you may install SMR Pro on 2 different PCs. Just use the same Key Code that we supplied you on both machines.

Q: At what time does the data get updated?

A: On most days, The End-of-Day dataload is available at 4:20-4:30 PM US Mountain Time. The Supplemental dataload is usually available by 9:00PM US Mountain Time.

Q: What’s the difference between the End-of-Day Dataload and the Supplemental Dataload?

A: The End-Of-Day data is a preliminary data feed. The data has not yet been exchange-verified when we release it, but it is usually quite accurate. We provide this data as a service to our customers, so that don’t have to wait until too late in the evening for their data.

The Supplemental dataload serves four functions:

1. On the Futures side, it updates the Weekly, Monthly, and Continuous charts with the current day’s data
2. It corrects any errors in the End-of-Day data
3. It corrects any errors in the previous day’s data
4. It updates the Volume data for the previous day’s Futures charts (NOTE: the Futures exchanges always release Volume data on the next day)

Q: Does SMR Pro include any technical indicators besides the SMR oscillators?

A: SMR Pro includes a comprehensive set of the most popular indicators, including:

But wait, there’s more. We also include four additional indicators that are exclusive to SMR:

Q: I see thick lines on the end of the 49-MA indicator, and on the end of the Dotted Line indicator. What do those mean?

A: These extension lines are projections of where the indicators will be heading next, assuming that closing prices remain unchanged over the next 4-5 days. We got the idea from Chick Goslin’s books. He recommends looking back in the history of the chart, and then projecting the future direction of the indicators based on the prices that are next in line to be dropped from the indicator calculations. The extension lines are just the software doing that for you.

Q: How do I get the Stop Lines to show up on my charts?

A: Just open the Trades window by clicking on the Trades & Stops button, and enter your trade info: The date of your trade entry, number of shares (or contracts), your entry price, and your initial stop. SMR Pro will then update the Stop Lines at the end of each trading day. To get the numeric read-out for the next day’s Stop Level, just hold your cursor anywhere beyond the last price bar, and look along the bottom of the screen. You’ll see a number for “STOP,” and also for “T-STOP” whenever the Tight Stop Line kicks in. You can also view these numbers by opening the Trades window.

Q: The Stop Lines are going past the point where I got stopped out of my trade. How do I fix that?

A: The software doesn’t assume that you got stopped out of your trade. Why not? Well, for instance, you may have placed a stop some place below the stop line, or maybe you didn’t have a physical stop in place at all. Just open the trade window, and click on your open position. Then enter your trade exit info: the date, the exit price, and the quantity. You can even enter multiple exit prices, with different quantities at each price level.

Q: How do I use the built-in Paper-Trading System?

A: Just enter the trade info as we describe above for the Stop Lines. The software will take over and compute your Profit/Loss at the end of each day, for every position that you enter into the system.

Q: Do you recommended going long as soon as the TrendRider goes Green, and going short as soon as the TrendRider goes Red?

A: If only trading were that easy, huh? No, the TrendRider is just one tool to help you make discretionary trading decisions. It is not a robot that makes decisions for you. There are lots of other factors to consider. Please study the On-Line Trading Guide – it’s free. You’ll learn a focused, specific approach to using all the SMR tools.

Q: Do you have any back-testing results for SMR Pro?

A: SMR Pro is a set of tools for making discretionary trading decisions. It is not an automated, black-box system. We don’t know how you would back-test even one person’s discretionary trading decisions.

Even with a completely automated system, you can take ten different disciplined, experienced traders, give them each 50 thousand dollars, and at the end of the first month, you’d have ten different account balances. Every trader will put his own spin on the system, even if given explicit instructions on exactly what to do. Just ask the guys who ran the Turtle Trading experiment. It’s the nature of trading.

We know that lots of trading software providers draw up charts of hypothetical trading results. In our opinion, these charts are worse than meaningless, they are ridiculous and misleading, if not downright fraudulent. You can miss, or catch, a few good moves in a year, and your trading results will be vastly different than the next guy who’s using the same system. Plus, we suspect that many, if not most, of these charts are constructed by looking back and cherry-picking the trades. We’re not going to play that game.

SMR provides a good, solid, time-tested set of tools. Your results will depend not only on how well you learn to use them, but how well you practice all the other aspects of successful trading. It’s a lot more than just trade entries and trade exits.

Q: Why haven’t you turned SMR Pro into a black-box system?

A: We believe the trained human eye can spot good trade set-ups better than any automated software system. Price actions just don’t behave predictably enough, often enough, to make automated trading decisions reliable enough to bet your money on. Besides, what fun would it be to have some machine make all your decisions for you?