Mark Brown's OddBall.Systems

Mark Brown's OddBall Trading System is a unique, time-tested automated trading method based entirely on market breadth, specifically leveraging the rate of change in NYSE Advancing Issues rather than traditional price data. By focusing on these metrics, OddBall provides buy and sell signals for S&P futures or the e-mini S&P, enabling traders to react to shifts in market sentiment in real-time.

Development and Legacy

OddBall's roots trace back to its original development on a specialized Ned Davis Research platform known as the Technalyzer. Brown's strategic use of this platform allowed OddBall to be traded institutionally for over a decade before making its public debut in Active Trader Magazine in 2000. This institutional grounding and transparency helped OddBall solidify its reputation, making it one of the longest-running automated trading systems. This long-standing operation is a testament to its robustness and appeal among traders, showcasing its ability to remain relevant through significant market changes.

Operational Mechanics

OddBall operates on an hourly basis, exclusively during regular market hours, with an "always-in" trading approach that continuously holds either a long or short position. This constant engagement with the market reflects its commitment to capturing short-term shifts in market sentiment and is achieved without any parameter adjustments since its inception. By using clear and publicly known thresholds, OddBall signals a long position when the rate of change in advancing issues surpasses a predefined level, and a short position when it falls below this level. This threshold-based approach helps traders capitalize on brief momentum shifts, effectively responding to the changing tides of market sentiment.

Additionally, the homepage of OddBall.Systems reflects the current trading position visually by changing the background color: a green background indicates a long position, while a red background indicates a short position. This feature provides users with a quick, visual understanding of the system's current stance.

Longevity and Public Accessibility

Now in its third decade of live trading, OddBall has proven its adaptability and effectiveness without the need for parameter changes, highlighting its initial strength and forward-thinking design. Its transparency is further exemplified by Brown's choice to make OddBall entirely accessible for public use - an offer rarely seen with proprietary trading strategies. This openness allows a broader spectrum of traders to explore market breadth-based strategies, blending OddBall's classic framework with contemporary insights and tools.

A Valuable Resource for Market Breadth-Based Strategies

Mark Brown's OddBall Trading System stands as a resilient and transparent example of market breadth-focused trading, designed to provide traders with a practical framework for capturing sentiment-driven shifts. Its straightforward methodology, stability, and institutional background make it particularly valuable for traders interested in a reliable, time-tested strategy that remains highly relevant to today's dynamic trading environment.

Understanding OddBall System Log: Insights and Analysis

This file provides a trading log for the OddBall Trading System, detailing a sequence of trades executed on the S&P 500 futures (represented by "ES"). You can access this log file directly at trades file. Below is a breakdown of each column and what it signifies:

• ES (Instrument): "ES" represents the S&P 500 E-mini futures contract, a standard CME futures contract widely used for trading S&P 500 index movements.
• Date: The date when each trade update was recorded, showing a timeline of position changes.
• Time: The time at each logged 30-minute interval, reflecting OddBall's market sentiment updates.
• Price: The current ES futures price at the recorded time, providing a real-time view of price fluctuations. This column captures the market price at each 30-minute interval, not the entry price.
• Trade: The entry price at which the trade was opened or the position commenced. This value remains constant for the duration of the position (i.e., it only updates when a new position is opened).
• Pos (Position): Indicates the position ("Long" or "Short") that OddBall holds at the logged time. The system uses an "always-in" approach based on market breadth rather than pure price action, ensuring it always holds a position.
• P/L (Profit/Loss): The profit or loss for the position since the last entry, calculated as the difference between the current Price and the Trade price. This value is recalculated every 30 minutes to reflect the position's performance in real-time.
• Yr.Total (Yearly Total): The cumulative profit or loss for the year up to the recorded trade log, providing a benchmark for the strategy's annual performance.

This log helps users observe how OddBall responds to market momentum, tracks positional consistency, and assesses the yearly profit accumulation. By offering clear, real-time feedback, the OddBall log underscores the strategy's transparency and its ability to react to shifts in market sentiment, allowing traders to integrate this data into their broader strategies effectively.

Open-Source and Community-Driven

The OddBall system, entirely maintained and provided by Mark Brown, is available completely free, open-source, and without any external funding or sponsorship. This commitment ensures that OddBall remains an accessible and unbiased resource for all traders looking to leverage market breadth in their trading strategies.

For a breakdown of Mark Brown's "Another Oddball System," a unique futures trading strategy developed in 1997, focusing on risk management and trend-following, check this link. Six years after its disclosure, it demonstrated strong returns using Adaptive Moving Averages and Bollinger Bands, reaching a cumulative return of 129.99%.

More information about your host Mark Brown