The Hurst Trader

A very common question that I have been asked by the many people involved in beta testing THT has been “what will happen when beta testing closes?”

Well, that time has arrived, and here are the answers to those questions.

First of all, by “closing beta testing”, all that is effectively happening is that newcomers to THT will not join the beta testing group. Newcomers will be working with THT as users of the software, and not as beta testers.

I have in fact closed beta testing before – in August of 2009, when we reached 50 beta testers, and I thought that was as many as I could handle, but as the error reports started to diminish I opened the beta testing group again.

And so what is different now? The difference now is that THT is moving into a new stage of development. I am calling this new stage supported development. 

Beta testing (of new and existing features) will in fact continue, but in a slightly different way: it will be more structured. No more random “testing” of THT by simply using it. Tasks are being defined, and beta testers will be required to choose a task to work on. These tasks will not be onerous in any way, but will provide for a much more thorough testing process. Beta testers will be required to report on the progress of their testing. Many of our beta testers have been doing this anyway, and so it might not be a big change for them.

Supported Development
The Hurst Trader started as a small personal project of mine. I wanted to create software that I could use for my own trading. The project has grown tremendously over the last 9 months, since I started beta testing with the 11 people who had stumbled across this blog. There are now 300 people who have “signed up” as beta testers, and that number is growing at an accelerating pace.

The sheer volume of questions and support requests has grown to a level where I have little time left to develop new features in the software. And developing THT further is something that I am very committed to doing.

And so I have had to make some decisions about the future of THT. These are some of the approaches I considered:

Should I say thank you to everyone involved and withdraw THT from the public, and use it to trade myself? I admit this is a tempting option. It is ironic that working on THT has taken up so much of my time that I spend very little time trading nowadays! But I have decided not to do this because I am very grateful to the many people who have helped to develop THT and would like to continue this journey with them.

Should I close Beta Testing and allow all existing beta testers to use the software for free forever? I did seriously consider this option. But there are two reasons why this is not what I will be doing. Firstly because there are many people who have not yet discovered THT, and the developing community has been one of the most rewarding aspects of this project for me. I don’t want to “close the doors” on the rest of that community. The second reason is because I want to keep developing THT. I have big plans for THT, including intraday analysis, a realtime version, and incorporating a broader and more advanced cyclic analysis.

Should I “bring THT to market” and start selling it as a commercial software application? This was perhaps the most obvious option, and it is my intention to do this eventually, but it seems premature to do it now, when I have so many new features that I still want to work into the software.

And so I convinced my partners in Fortuna Software to delay “bringing THT to market”, and to rather start a period of supported development. Development will continue, and it will be supported by the contributions of THT users.

I have seen very clear evidence (emailed to me privately by many beta testers) that THT can be used to enhance trading profits. And so it is time that this project becomes self-sustaining.

The further development of THT will be supported by the purchasing of 3-month licenses. All newcomers to our user group will need to do this after the 30-day free trial expires, and existing users will transition to this new phase now.

It is my sincere hope that this transition goes well, and that a very contented group of beta testers who have been using the software for free will become a very contented group of users who know that they are getting more benefit from the software than they are contributing towards its development.