I've been working on the software review chapter of the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing for about two weeks now. I started the chapter with the idea that if you wanted position sizing software, you really had two choices. The first choice was to learn to program yourself In Excel and do everything in Excel. And that's still an option.

The second choice was to find someone to help you custom develop software for your trading business. The latter choice amounts to a several hundred thousand dollar commitment with no guarantee that you'd have anything but a software mess at the end.

However, after looking over reviews of a number of packages, looking at the web sites, and in a few cases, actually looking at the software myself. I think there is hope out there. I was actually suprised at the number of packages that have been developed by people after reading Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom.

There are some fairly good simulators out there -- Market system analyzer and Trade Sim both come to mind.

There is software with bulit in systems plus position sizing that requires little programming. MT Predictor and OmniTrader both come to mind.

There is some software that allows you to play with some pretty good systems, optimize, and do both simulations and position sizing with very little programming requirements. Here the software of choice seems to be Trading Blox (Turtle or Pro editions.)

There are two packages at the $3000 level that allow you to develop much of what you need if you are willing to program.. These including Trading Blox Builder and Mechanica Standard. Trading Blox has the advantages desribed above, but if you need to get into programming, it looks like a steep learning curve. Mechanic Standard is the NEW windows edition of Trading Recipes, but with many improvements. Trading Recipes was very easy to program and my understanding is that Mechanica Standard will be equally easy and it includes a number of built in sysems.

And there are even high end packages designed for trading businesses -- Mechanica Pro and PowerST. These are both probably a better than spending a lot of money for custom software and both are being used now. Mechanica Pro has been in Beta Testing for four years and is currently involved in managing billions of dollars.

Anyway, my overall conclusions is that position sizing software has evolved a lot. I now believe that most of you can find some software package out there that is right for you and that does position sizing.

I'll have a lot more information for you when the Definitive Guide to Position Sizing comes out. When? I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, so my guess is 4 months after I finish it, but certainly some time in 2007.