About Us

 
What We Are About

 
Our Mission

Our mission is to bring automated trading to the masses. Until now, all automated trading software required some programming ability. Now you just need to know the difference between a left-click and a right-click.
 

Core Values

In all of our dealings, we value integrity over anything else, including profit. If we say we will do something, we will do it.
 

Our Motivation

We are dedicated to breaking free of the rat race, as soon as possible, and helping others to do the same. Trading for a living seemed the best way, for us at least. Trading is still 'work', but can be done from home and you become your own boss.

Trading is simple, but it's not easy. Depending on the book or website you are reading, between 80% and 95% of traders lose all of their trading bank. It doesn't matter which figure is correct - the truth is that placing trades is very easy to do, but staying in this game for the long term is fairly difficult.

Using automated trading software makes it easier, but there are still traps along the way. We are actually risk-adverse. We don't want to lose the money we already have. And so we don't pretend to think we will get rich quickly. You can put 50% of your savings into 1 trade, and if that goes well then you have done very well. But following that strategy, just two bad trades in a row means you are out of the game forever.

And so, this is a long-term project. We aren't going anywhere. And we hope to create a support network, a community of traders, who are helpful to each other, and who all aim for the ultimate goal of financial freedom. We will share our knowledge and experiences gained along the way, and we hope many others will join us.

To that end, we are committed to bring automated trading software into the reach of the common man or woman. Even if you have little money, or no computer skills. As long as you share our vision and wish to be part of a supportive community.
 

Conflict Of Interest

We want to trade for a living, so we can 'work' at home, avoid the commute, the snarly boss, and the restriction of being told when we have to wake up and when we can and can't have a holiday.

But we also spend time making software and websites, dealing with customers, and often have day-jobs.

The two don't seem to fit. So let me explain.

Firstly, trading is not guaranteed income like a job is. In the good times, it's good. In the bad times, it's bad. In the bad times, you want and perhaps need money coming in from another source.

Secondly, trading for a living is much easier when you have more savings. Let's say my yearly expenses are $40K. And let's say I have $40K in savings. It means I need to make 100% per year, every year, just to stay afloat. And that doesn't even account for inflation.

But now let's say I have $400K in savings. Now I need to make just 10% per year from trading. It's more comfortable, but still not a sure thing. What if I had $4 million? Now I need to make just 1% in profit every year.

More savings means less pressure, and less pressure means less stress. And so yeah - we'll do whatever we have to in order to build up our savings. Even if that means getting a job. This want of ours to break free from the rat race as soon as possible, ironically leads us to work harder so we get higher salaries, in order to build up our savings more quickly.
 

Our History

I had attended a seminar on currency trading and couldn't get the trading rules to work for me. The question I had to answer was, were the rules I had learnt wrong, or was I simply letting emotion get the better of me?

The only way to answer this question was to get a computer to do the trading for me, using those rules. And so I started putting together some software which would go over historical price data and work out how much profit or loss the trading rules would have made.

So originally the Automated Trading Machine software was only for personal use, and it was just for backtesting.

The problem with getting a computer to do the trading is that the trading rules have to be 100% objective. You can't tell a computer to "only buy in an uptrend" - you have to tell the computer what "an uptrend" is. So I had to make some minor modifications to get those trading rules into a purely objective form. Then the computer could do the trading for me.

And then I thought, if the computer could do the trading for me, then the computer SHOULD do the trading for me. Currency trading is not passive income - you have to be looking at the computer screen all day. But having the computer do the trading for you, that is passive income.

And so I had stumbled upon the perfect industry - automated trading. There is no warehouse required, no customers, no advertising. It can be done by anyone with a computer and an internet connection. And the computer is doing it for you, so you could be off doing whatever you wanted - at the beach, washing the dishes, playing with your kids, working at your day job, and so on.

When I realised this, I decided perhaps there was a market for my software. Although there is more involved in packaging up some software for sale (as opposed to just using it myself), I didn't see any harm in making it available to other people. You choose your own rules, so our trades probably won't interfere with each other. And anyway, "more life to all, and less to none" says my favourite book - "The Science of Getting Rich". I hope both my software and that book helps you as much as they help me.

My little hobby grew into a small business, and I even have a part-time employee. So I created a company and called it Thinking Stuff Pty Ltd - registered in Queensland, Australia.
 

Our People

 
Mark

Hi, I'm Mark.

I was born in Queensland, Australia, and lived there until I was 27 years old. I have two undergraduate degrees: a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Computational Mathematics, and Bachelor of Arts in Japanese. Both are from The University of Queensland.

After graduation I worked for four years as an IT Consultant for a multi-national corporation. I had a great time for the first few years, even though I worked quite a few overtime hours. In fact, it wasn't until my working hours came to be 9-5 that I became really bored. I found my satisfaction level had more to do with the people around me, rather than the job I was doing. Having good people around can make any job fun. But, after 4 years, all my friends were working on out-of-town assignments, or had resigned, or had transferred to a different country.

So I too resigned, painted my house so I could sell it (the painting and the selling both taking longer than I expected), and ironically moved to a country where I had no friends.

My 18 months in Japan was fun. But living there without a job was very expensive. I spent most of my time writing my software.

Then I moved back to my parents' farm for a year. I also spent most of my time there finishing the software, before finally obtaining a job back in civilisation. I now live and work on the Gold Coast.

Sharky? Shark Meat is rhyming slang for my name from the local drunk at the dormitory I used to live at. Years later I was walking to lunch with my work colleagues and an old friend from college saw me and called me "Shark Meat". She said it so very naturally, that it was if it was my name from birth. Then the nickname spread throughout my work colleagues and over time has been shortened to "Sharky".

Enjoy the site.
 

Rhett

I met Rhett when I worked with him on a project on the Gold Coast. He became a good friend, became interested in the software, and ended up helping me out.

Rhett spent his youth (mis-spent? :-) travelling the world and working at various ski resorts and software companies.

Finally he came back to his hometown (the Gold Coast), married his high-school sweetheart and now has two very young children.

Having Rhett around is definitely a case of following the advice of "employ people who are smarter than you".
 

Andrew2

Number 2 because there was another Andrew before him, he is number 2 by name only.
Also officially known as Glen "Andrew" Gibson, he takes care of most web things here at Thinking Stuff earning him the title of "Webmaster".

Earning a Bachelor of Multimedia at Griffith University's Gold Coast campus, he worked in various positions in the industry while living on the Gold Coast. It was there he met Mark over a common interest in Japanese stuff. He followed his girlfriend to North Tokyo in late 2008, where he works in Motion Graphics and Web Design.

Officially joining Thinking Stuff in 2009 (although he was hanging around beforehand), he takes care of all things Drupal (the software that makes this website you're reading), and even a little design some times.