Stocks & Commodities V.
11:14 (601-602): Product Review: N-Train by John Sweeney
PRODUCT REVIEW
N-Train
Version 1.1
SCIENTIFIC CONSULTANT
SERVICES, INC.
20 Stagecoach Road
Selden, NY 11784
Phone: 516 696-3333
Product: Neural net development
package
Equipment requirements: IBM com-
patible 386 or better with 32-bit nu-
meric coprocessor. DOS 3.0 or higher.
No hard disk drive required if there is
enough space on floppy disks. Cannot
run under Windows or OS/2, but a Win-
dows version is to be released soon.
Price: $747 for N-Train; $159 for
TradeNet module.
by John Sweeney
t looks as if the neural net idea
I may not follow the fads of the
past: more and more of these
products are appearing — and
selling. Where I could once recall off the
top of my head two or three trading-
oriented neural network packages, my
latest count showed 12. Of these, one that
is prepared for heavier duty is N-Train,
which supports fast, full 32-bit addressing
as well as 64-bit numeric processing for
accurate adjusting of weights while build-
ing networks.
One nifty feature of N-Train is the
TradeNet module. This program sup-
plies the hook between TradeStation
(2.0 or higher) and N-Train. You can
see the neural net’s indicator directly in
TradeStation’s graphics, plus Trade-
Station is able to set up the fact files (the
raw data) that the neural network will
use to come up with its solution. Though
this does not eliminate the interface
issues with N-Train, it is an order of
magnitude more efficient and effective
for a trader than doing things in DOS or
working from within a spreadsheet.
N-Train itself is not your modern
gee-whiz package for spectacular color
graphics, point-and-click interface and
101 preprogrammed indicators built for
the masses of retail traders. This is a
workaday package of programs for a
user skilled in file handling, spreadsheet input neuron numbers proliferate. If you
import/export, spreadsheet formulations have a $5,000 to $10,000 accelerator or
and even a little C++. This is the real a workstation, hardware can overcome
thing, rawly presented in the cold, black the slowdown. If not, N-Train speeds
screen of DOS. If a slowly blinking cur- up computation by eliminating all the
sor waiting for your typed commands spreadsheet overhead and having you
gives you chills, if picking up hints of do the preprocessing and file transfer
problems from the way DOS displays a work. A neural network beginner would
file or flashes an error message isn’t your probably choose something like
cup of tea, read no further. Neuralyst to begin with and then gradu-
ate to N-Train when size, speed and
MANUAL LABOR MINIMAL sophistication needs increased later on.
Scientific Consultant Services (SCS) has
given more than adequate guidance in a WORKING, WORKING...
plain but thorough manual replete with With N-Train, there is no waiting. The
thorough, accurate explanations and an program is very, very fast. If it’s not,
exhaustive run-through of a real world there’s even a specially modified cus-
development situation. Exemplary C++ tom-designed board you can slap into
code is provided where needed, usually to your personal computer that will accel-
show how to preprocess your data files, erate computations to warp speed.
though most but not all (given N-Train’s Setting up for a run just involves
ASCII file setup) of that can be done in some typing with its usual potential for
your spreadsheet. No index is provided, errors. Once you know the game and the
but the table of contents and the manual’s regions you want to explore, you’ll start
organization make it useful and usable. using batch files to tweak all the param-
The major omission is a table of error eters and rerun the training.
message explanations. As a result, you The sequence is setting up the data
get to figure out what “Se-
quence error reading user fact
file!” or other such cryptic This is a workaday package for
messages mean — or you get a user skilled in file handling,
to call to find out. spreadsheet import/export,
Nearly all neural packages spreadsheet formulations and
require you to preprocess the
data for presentation to the even a little C++. This is the
package. The more sophisti- real thing, presented in the
cated have built their packages cold, black screen of DOS.
as add-ons to spreadsheets so
that the data already resides where the files (for programmers, an example of C
neural add-on can grab it, and the add-on code is supplied), specifying the scaling
knows exactly where to store the results. for the data (necessary since most nets
This is convenient but slow, especially as operate best in the range of -1 to +1),
Copyright © Technical Analysis, Inc.
Stocks & Commodities V. 11:14 (601-602): Product Review: N-Train by John Sweeney
FIGURE 1: N-TRAIN OUTPUT TO LOTUS. Taking a crack at forecasting the closing price of IBM, N-
Train does a fine job at first, but then the error of the forecast begins to increase, indicating the need
for one or two more independent variables. Graph is by Lotus 1-2-3. N-Train has no graphic capability.
loading up the training and testing data,
specifying the depth and width of the
network you want, setting the param-
eters, training, checking results, training
some more, tweaking things and repeat-
ing the whole process. Results informa-
tion is limited during the training run to
correlation coefficients and mean error.
You can also ask for a text file to be
dumped that shows expected vs. actual
output. These can be fed to your spread-
sheet for error analysis. The entire pro-
cess requires familiarity with the envi-
ronment, text editors, spreadsheets or C.
Once you try to feed it numbers daily,
you’d better be fluent, not just familiar.
You say you want to try this intraday?
Not without TradeStation.
RESULTS
N-Train converged quickly in all the ex-
amples I gave it. Never did it hit an un-
stable patch and start oscillating back and
forth between two sets of node weights,
a tribute, probably, to its bit depth. I’d
be hard put to compare N-Train’s abil-
ity with other neural net packages be-
cause network development is an art of
blending the investigator’s intuition
about the data and skill in preprocess-
ing it with the package’s capabilities
and parameter sets. There are too many
variables there for even a neural net-
work to sort out!
USERS’ COMMENTS
Most users we contacted like the
program’s no-holds-barred efficiency,
stability and reproducible results (it
saves the entire net and the seed†, so
you can come back to where you started,
if need be). One user had even ported it
to UNIX and a workstation to work with
a particularly large data set and found
Copyright © Technical Analysis, Inc.
that it worked well. Then again, most
users we talked to were professionals,
deeply familiar with their machines,
operating systems and competitive soft-
ware. Here are some of their comments:
• “This is a package for someone who
likes to tinker, not a beginner.”
• “It’s fast. And accurate. It’s the 32-
bit capability.”
• “It can handle huge data sets. I’ve
given it 25,000 facts all the time.”
• “I went back to BrainMaker six
months ago. I was just more used to
the interface.”
In addition to this, we received some
suggested user advice:
• “The seed you give the network has
a huge impact on the result, so
experiment a lot with it.”
• “Don’t feed price-based indicators
to networks and expect tomorrow’s
price. Instead, use the indicator to
trigger the neural network’s esti-
mate of the situation.”
• “Don’t feed indicators to nets at
all! The weights show they are just
filtered out in favor of raw price
action. Instead, increase the offer-
ing of truly independent variables.”
• “Preprocessing the data and finding
the right data seem to have more of
an impact on the effectiveness of the
results than anything else.”
CONCLUSION
Once it comes to decision time, N-
Train’s pricing is competitive with
other comparable programs. If you’re
comfortable with the DOS interface,
give N-Train the nod for its speed in
handling huge data piles and its 32-bit
precision.
John Sweeney is the Technical Editor
of STOCKS & COMMODITIES.
TA