Protecting your strategies

[sle]

Protecting IP vs actually living and working is always a trade-off. For example, if you are going to raise capital, you are always torn between being as transparent as possible to please the investors and being as opaque as possible to avoid giving away your edge.

Further, it is a major problem if you are working with people - do you want to train your junior trader so he can walk away with your strategies? Do you want your bosses to know what you are doing so they can hire a cheaper replacement?

I found that the only consolation is that the devil is in details and the details are very hard to learn. It certainly pays to be paranoid and certainly pays to be vigilant. It also pays not to waste too much time on security efforts.

just my .25 vols

 

[gmst]

Quote from gmst:

Stan, Thanks for stepping up and making a comment.

1. However, it happened 2-3 days ago and when I clicked to show the file that MC is sending, along with 100 other things, I could find all the files in this directory also that multicharts was sending.

C:\ProgramData\TS Support\MultiCharts\StudyServer\Studies\SrcEl

As you know all these files can be opened up in a notepad and everything revealed. So, I am not sure if you are correct here. Or, if my understanding is flawed, I request you to kindly clarify what it means.

Once I discovered above, I didn't send the logs.

2. I think multicharts does sends the information from quotemanager, so it does send the symbols that I have opened on my platform. Doesn't it send the quotemanager information ?

3. I agree with point 4. and 5. you make. That is why I am not accusing you of anything. Rather say that I am happy if you can put facts here and make all the doubts go away.

Cheers,
GMST

Its a Friday folks and I have some time to re-visit this topic. Few days ago, My MC crashed again.

Anyways, Multicharts logs doesn't have this line anymore.

C:\ProgramData\TS Support\MultiCharts\StudyServer\Studies\SrcEl

This folder has all EL files that can be opened in notepad. This means that Stan Bokov got this file removed as a result of this thread. But he didn't care to tell us. Anyways.

Rather, MC logs mention .sef files now (MC is not copying .sef files, the log just mentions that they are checking/compiling the .sef files on my computer to test whether they is OK or not). Moreover, .sef files can't be opened with notepad as they are compiled.

Finally, I was able to locate the location of log file on my computer. that was causing all this doubt in my mind. It is located at

C:\Users\....\AppData\Local\TS Support\MultiCharts\8.0.5620...\Logs\StudyServer\StudyServer_Trace.txt

Upon opening this file, I saw this just had a line that it had one line each for compiling each strategy and then spitting out message "OK" - meaning the strategies compiled. It was not copying the actual strategies. So, I guess I was wrong in doubting that MC is copying the best strategies from its traders and I would like to re-tract my statement when I said that 'probably' MC is copying the strategies. MC is all ok now from my side!