Sunday, January 1, 2017

Ponzo Forecasts

Peter Ponzo was an Economics Professor at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada who specialized in researching how the the financial markets worked along with developing multiple algorithmic forecasting models to postulate likely future price paths.
Peter's work was seminal in its field and has provided the foundation for many subsequent sophisticated algorithmic trading constructs widely used by money managers and hedge funds.
One of his models was termed the Time Machine which looked at the entire life history of a security's price, broke it down into 25 week increments, and then compared the current 25 week price history of a security against the entire price history to find that period when price was most similar using a variety of metrics.  The Time Machine then looked at what had happened to price from the current benchmark date and then projected that momentum assessed odds out 18 weeks.
That was the essence of the Time Machine.  A fellow trader and algorithm master, Jeff Pietsch, enhanced the Time Machine model by capturing the top 5 probability forecast scenarios and in the process found that multiple scenarios, although widely different in outlook, often had very similar probability odds..
Mosaic then modified the momentum and relative strength algorithms used to compare historical and current price patterns and refined the graphical interface for easier understanding.
A metric panel was also added to define the current volatility environment using standard deviations and short term support / resistance price projections were provided as risk management guidelines.