We are a team of industry professionals who want to develop the next generation of professional market timing strategy developers. What we're proposing is quite a commitment on the part of all parties involved, so we want to take a step back and first explain the Timer Seeds vision.
First, a little bit about us. As mentioned, we are a team of market timers from multiple successful firms. The manner in which we each monetize our work is different (some manage client accounts directly, others act as pure signal sellers to other financial professionals), but at the end of the day we're all in the business of developing effective market timing strategies.
We play in a pretty large arena with a lot of competition. What experience has shown however, is that (a) there are only a handful of players that are consistently good performers (others come and go but the core group stays the same), and (b) the vast majority of wealth invested in these types of systems is traded by these consistently good performers. A side note, everyone selected for the Timer Seeds team is from this exceptional core group.
What experience has also shown is that out of this core group, each of us is approaching the markets from completely different angles. Our strategies exhibit low correlation to one another, yet we are all over time consistently profitable. The logical conclusion is that there are many solutions to the market timing puzzle. Each of us has found what works for us and while the way we get to our results is different, we all still find a way to get there.
The Vision
During our careers we meet lots of promising individuals doing the same things we do to create our own strategies - spending long hours hunched over computer screens or piles of charts looking for patterns, or inefficiencies, or whatever. Many have created trading strategies that have done as well or even better than our own, but those strategies never saw the light of day outside of the developer's own accounts.
Why? Because they didn't know how to monetize their work. That's why our vision was born. We want to use our industry knowledge and experience to help these developers move from the lab to the street, from designing strategies for themselves to designing strategies for the financial industry - while still protecting their intellectual property rights. This last point is key - people like us work hard to create our strategies and should never be asked to divulge specific trading rules...period.
Our four-step process:
- DEFINE:
Molding the strategy to fit what investors and (by extension) financial professionals want. This is really about defining the "personality" of the strategy and how that personality will be received by the investing community.
- AUDIT:
Auditing past results and setting up a process for continued auditing. This is absolutely vital to becoming a professional market timer. There are really only two ways to be successful in this business: (a) be a well known personality a' la "Cramer", or (b) prove that you are very good at what you do (and seldom do the two go together). As a matter of personal pride and a lack of TV good looks, we want to build our businesses on being very good at what we do.
- SELL:
The Timer Seeds team has as much as fifteen years of experience selling market timing strategies. We want to leverage the relationships we've built in the industry to connect our developers with the end users who use people like us: individual investors, financial advisors, hedge funds, and other industry professionals. This is the most significant barrier to entry for most new timers - it's one thing to be a success in the confines of your own account - it's an entirely different thing to get the attention of people that move money.
- MAINTAIN:
Almost as important as selling a strategy (and definitely as time-consuming) is maintaining the relationship with the end user (individual investors and financial professionals). This includes but is not limited to: periodic discussions and meetings to discuss the program and performance, providing back-office legal and accounting support, ensuring timely and accurate payments, auditing reported assets under management, and ensuring compliance on all contracts.
Our Motivation
The most logical question after reading our vision, is why? Why would we want to help new competitors enter an already competitive field? The answer is two-fold, part altruistic and part profit-driven.
Altruistically, we want to be the good guys. This industry is rife with charlatans and snake oil salesmen, touting their successes and conveniently forgetting their failures. We want all of the strategy developers we grow through Timer Seeds to succeed the right way - on the back of strong audited track records. This improves the legitimacy of our industry which (a) makes us feel good because this is what we do for a living, and (b) encourages more investors to employ market timing.
There's also a profit-motive. We spend a lot of time working directly with our timers sharing our hard fought experience and we stake our reputations on their work. In exchange, as is customary in this industry, we receive a percentage of the compensation from any contracts we negotiate or introduce. This is a very transparent process and our timers always have the absolute final decision on any contracts involving their strategy.
The Next Step
If you are a market timing strategy developer interested in joining the Timer Seeds team, or have any questions at all about what we do, please contact us. Tell us a little about yourself, your experience, and what you want to accomplish. Be sure to include any backtested or real-time results. The Timer Seeds team will review your information and contact you shortly.
We appreciate the time you've taken to learn more about our vision.
- The Timer Seeds Team