I am researching historical practices of mutual fund market timing for
the period prior to September 2003.  This is an investment approach
that involves rapidly switching funds between an equity mutual fund
and a money market mutual fund.  Since September of 2003 there has
been an industry wide crack down on the practice of mutual fund market
timing and a number of mutual funds have paid large settlements to the
SEC to settle charges that they allowed market timing that was not in
the best interest of mutual fund shareholders.

The particular angle that I am researching is the extent to which
mutual fund market timing was an out in the open accepted investment
alternative in the months and years prior to September 2003.  Over the
years a number of investment books have been published recommending
mutual fund market timing as a way to increase investment returns and
reduce volatility.  There have been a number of newsletters that an
investor could subscribe to in order to get recommendations as to when
to switch into and out of specific mutual funds.  For an additional
fee, some newsletters would send an investor a fax or e-mail alert
advising them when to make a mutual fund switch.  There were also
software programs that could be purchased or leased advising an
investor when to make a mutual fund switch.

What I am specifically looking for is 4 types of reference:

1. Books that have been published which recommended investment
techniques for market timing mutual funds.  The entire book need not
be on the topic of mutual fund market timing so long as there is an
in-depth discussion of how to market time mutual funds in one or more
chapters of the book. For example the widely popular book "Market
Wizards" devoted several chapters to mutual fund market timing.

2. Newsletters that were available on a subscription basis which made
specific recommendations for when to buy and sell mutual funds in a
market timing investment program. The newsletter may no longer be in
circulation, but it would be sufficient to get a the name and the last
available contact information for the publication.

3. Services that would actually give an investor a phone call, fax or
e-mail recommending a specific mutual fund market timing switch to be
made on a particular date.

4. Computer programs that could be purchased or leased to provide
specific signals for when to purchase and when to sell mutual funds as
part of a market timing investment approach to mutual fund investing.

Although all four of these are related questions and likely could be
answered by a single researcher I would like specific and detailed
research on all 4 categories.  Accordingly I am submitting this same
research question with 4 separate headings so that I can offer a $200
research project for each category of reference.

In this specific question I am asking for research on topic FOUR:
computer programs that are or at one time were available either for
sale or for lease that would make specific recommendations on specific
dates for the purchase and sale of mutual funds as part of a mutual
fund market timing strategy. It may be that some of these programs are
no longer being offer for sale or lease, and in that event the last
available contact information for the computer program would be
sufficient.

Thank you for your help.

Hello, sl7-ga!

 There are several trading software systems available for the home PC,
but most of them are geared toward stocks and options rather than
mutual funds. There are also programs that track mutual funds but most
are geared toward investment tracking and analyzing than for
triggering buy/sell signals.

 I have found a few mutual fund tracking programs that were available
before 2003. Some of the websites also provide newsletters so they are
also profiled in my answer to your question concerning that subject.


==


 As an introduction, you may be interested in reading an extremely
interesting article about the effects of personal computer
transactions for mutual fund market timing on the investment industry:

"To What Avail? Computer Technology and Mutual Funds." Remarks by John
C. Bogle, Chairman and Founder The Vanguard Group of Investment
Companies. Grant's Spring Investment Conference. New York, New York
(April 3, 1997)
http://www.vanguard.com/bogle_site/lib/comptech.html
 

==



*************
RUSH TRADE
*************
http://www.rushtrade.com/

"Trade Mutual Funds Online - RushTrade Securities, Inc., member NASD,
PSE, and SIPC insured. Clients have the ability to trade their mutual
fund orders direct from their computer. Free demo.

Why trade with RushTrade?
--------------------------
Direct Access Trading on all trading systems
Suitable for all trading styles: day trading, online trading, swing trading,  
 position trading
Fast, secure, and reliable trading systems
Experienced support professionals

*** Also available: Fixed income, bonds, options, and mutual funds




***********
FAST TRACK
************
www.fasttrack.net

The fast track site is recorded on the internet archives as far back
as 1998. It has seen a progression from a "High Speed Investment
Browser to software for the PC.
http://web.archive.org/web/20000304082924/http://www.fasttrack.net/


The Fast Track Integrated Communications Browser from a March 4, 2000 webpage 
http://web.archive.org/web/20000229081943/www.fasttrack.net/ftcomm.htm

"This communication package connects with FastTrack's FTP servers to
do all communication functions. If you can connect to the Internet,
then all the work is already done. FastTrack will use that link.

"The communications process may be interrupted at any point and
restarted. The FTComm will not resend files which were received prior
to the interrupt. Long processes will progress on each reconnection
and eventually complete."

"Data Update: Gets the latest mutual fund and stock database data (if
you have a stock database installed.)

"Upgrade Versions: Gets new programs via the Internet. All new files
are sent as discrete zipped files that are decompressed at the end of
the session. If the session is interrupted, FTCOMM will restart from
the last successfully downloaded file. The decompression does not
occur until the whole download is successfully completed."

Online Integrity Check, A FastTrack Exclusive Feature:
"If your database becomes corrupted for any reason, we will restore it
online, 24-hours/day, 7 days/week at no charge. Online Integrity Check
keeps your FastTrack databases byte-for-byte, bit-for-bit identical to
our master databases."

"Installation: If you do not have FastTrack or have never installed a
particular FastTrack feature, then the Install option will install it
for you from our FTP server."

By Subscription Only. 




*******************
AIQ TRADING SYSTEM
*******************
http://www.aiqsystems.com/index.html

"TradingExpert Pro- award winning trading software for stocks, futures
and mutual funds."

History
http://www.aiqsystems.com/proven.htm

"The results are truly impressive. In 1997 the system had a return of
37.7%. Even more impressive is the fact that the average annual return
for the entire six year period is 25.04%. That beats the S&P 500 index
(and 85% of professional investors) by an average of 6.3% per year!"

Contact Information
http://www.aiqsystems.com/contactinfo.htm




*****************************
MONOCLE MUTUAL FUND SOFTWARE
*****************************
http://www.alamopc.org/pcalamode/features/F20010306.shtml

From a 2001 article on the website:

"Turn your computer into a mutual fund goldmine! So goes the catch
line on Monocle Systems home page."

"About three years ago, Tony Sagami, founder of Monocle Systems, gave
a lively presentation to the APCO Financial SIG. Several of us took
him up on his great user group pricing and bought the software and
subscribed to the data service. Due to the group interest in mutual
funds, a Monocle Mutual Fund SIG was organized.. Walt McGinnis and
myself are co-chairs."

"Monocle is a mutual fund analytical software program for Windows. It
is one of the easier to use financial analytical programs available.
It includes automated trading systems show you what the optimal move
is following your personalized trading program. The mutual fund?s
daily net asset value is downloaded off the internet."

"In Monocle, fund-trading decisions are driven by technical timing
tools long familiar to stock traders: moving average crossovers, trend
line penetrations, and swings of relative strength. The charting
package will display these indicators; charts can be marked with
arrows to indicate buy and sell points."



**********
MONEYFLOW
**********
http://www.moneyflow.com/

"Market timing system software, book and report for mutual fund investing."

* A $48 annual subscription includes a lease of our market timing
software program for use on your home PC."

"Goal - Double the 7% annualized average gain of the benchmark S&P 500
Index in conservative accounts."

"Strategy - 1) Invest in stronger than market managed funds, index
funds  or ETF's.  2) Capture the lion share of uptrend profits.  3) 
Switch to the safety of money market funds to lower risk and limit
losses during downtrends."

"Tools ~ SUBSCRIBE, PURCHASE or LICENSE our computerized trend I.D.
systems.  These Excel formatted programs can be installed on your
personal computer."

(Since 1995)




*******************************************
SELECT TIMING SERVICE/DOLLAR LINK SOFTWARE
*******************************************
http://www.dollarlink.com/

"STS analyzes mutual fund price patterns to identify short-term
trends. It uses Gil Blake's ideas as well as proprietary methods that
utilize elements of statistics. Blake is a highly successful mutual
funds switcher."


STS Details
http://www.dollarlink.com/details.htm

"Basically, our system, which we call STS (Select Timing Service),
generates buy signals whenever a fund's price rises and the monthly
change in price is greater than F * average monthly change for that
fund. The multiplier F is a key factor here. It is a proprietary
quantity and depends (among other things) on the volatility of the
fund in question and usually varies between 1.0 and 2.0."


DollarLink Software is primarily in the business of developing
technical analysis software for real-time traders. It was founded in
1985
http://www.dollarlink.com/about.htm



************
FUND SWITCH
************
http://www.fundswitch.com/

Trades Rydex or Profunds and allows investors to make their own trades
through their brokerage account. Software is hosted on the company
website.

The Strategy:

Trade only 1 fund at the time, the status of the signals is Cash, UOPIX or 
 USPIX. 
Solid system that identifies key entry points in the market. 
You can manage the system off the market hours, if you have a busy schedule 
 you can send  the orders before market open.
Short term trading approach, stay in the market only for a few days. 
The strategy is objective to generate the signals, there are no emotions 
 behind. 
We disclose ALL our past trades, losses are NEVER hidden, and honesty is a 
 must to our subscribers

Performance back to 2000
http://www.fundswitch.com/performance.htm



********************
STOCK MARKET TIMING
********************
http://www.stockmarkettiming.com/

This concept is a little bit different because the software market
timing program is hosted on the website as opposed to an individual
PC. Investors can select the mutual fund indexes they want to trade as
well as view timing signals on the members only page.
http://www.stockmarkettiming.com/timing.html




*********************
SUCCESSFUL INVESTING
*********************
https://iplacereports.com/index.asp?sid=FFP703

This is another "on-site" fund screener. Investors can access the fund
screener hosted on site with their membership:

"Unlimited use of the subscriber-only website--including access to our
interactive Fund Screener--the only online tool that lets me run 4-,
8- and 12-week performance sorts for over 8,000 mutual funds


====


 I hope the references I have provided prove helpful for your
research. Unfortunately, computer market timing programs for mutual
fund trading are not very plentiful. The programs mentioned above were
all I could find that were available before 2003, although there may
be more that simply do not show up without knowing the exact name or
website address.

 Please let me know if I can clarify anything further. I will be happy
to help if I can!


Sincerely,

umiat

Search Strategy
computer trading of mutual funds
mutual fund trading software
trading software
computer tracking software
trading online
stock market trading on your PC
mutual fund market timing "computer programs"
market timing software

Thank you for an excellent answer.

This is a very very simple way to time mutual funds.  

Take a ten day moving average of the the equity mutual fund. Buy when
the price is above the moving average by .75 percent.  Sell when the
price drops below .75 percent above the ten day moving average.

Depending on the type of mutual fund you can get as much as a 25%
return at extremely low risk.

Thank you so much, sl7!

The question above as well as the answer are way out of context and
understanding of what the matter with fraudulent "market timing"
activities was about.

The answers sought above have no relevance to the core of question:
"Since September of 2003 there has been an industry wide crack down on
the practice of mutual fund market timing and a number of mutual funds
have paid large settlements to the SEC to settle charges that they
allowed market timing that was not in the best interest of mutual fund
shareholders."

I.e. the asker has, fair enough, not understood what the courts mattes
was about in relation to what he has discovered about "market timing".
 But unfortunately for the asker, the Google appointed "expert", who
should have explained along the lines below, disclosed his entire lack
of knowledge by searching for market timing on the web and misleading
all readers into believing that all thos services listed are involved
in acitivites in the borderland to criminal acts!  And that is serious
for an proclaimed "expert" to do.

The actions that had taken place have mislabeled some forms of
activity as market timing. Market Timing, done legally, is neither
fraudulent nor unethical.  As the answer above illustrates there are a
high number of professional as well as individual investors following
up own savings who use the referred tools with the view to buying low
and sell high, which is the very definition of market timing.  And
that is NOT fraudelent and is NOT what the arbitartors in the fund
companies where doing when speculating in overnight international fund
arbitrage.

The unethical market timing, which has ABSOLUTELY NO RELEVANCE TO THE
SERVICES OF THE EASY-TO-FIND references listed above (not worth 50$ !)
is mainly done by the following two techniques which could potentially
disadvantage other market participants:

"Late trading" 
Short term market timing or mutual fund time zone arbitrage 
"Late trading" means simply the purchase or sale of securities after
the official market close (e.g. after 4 p.m. EST) at the price (or net
asset value, NAV) determined at the market close. So this practice
allows "privileged" (because of special arrangements) market
participants to profit from market events that occur after the
official market close. The problem is that these events are not
reflected in that day's market closing prices!

Short term market timing or (excessive) mutual fund time zone
arbitrage means to profit from minimal mis-pricing because of time
zone differences among international financial markets.
Mutual funds which are investing also in foreign securities are the
main target of this short term practice. It seeks to exploit
inefficient mutual fund share prices that are based on closing prices
of foreign securities, which were established some time before the
mutual fund calculated its own mutual fund share price.

Arbitrage per se is neither illegal nor unethical, because it plays an
important role for providing efficient market prices. But that kind of
arbitrage could also disadvantage long-term shareholders and could
hinder efficient mutual fund management (e.g. by causing higher
trading and administration costs).

Hello, k_tieff-ga! 

 If you had followed the series of four questions asked by sl7 and the
clarification I provided on one of the other questions, you would have
seen that your concerns were addressed before I answered the above
question. Please see
http://www.answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=373746 and my
following clarification which addresses the issue you have raised:

 "I do have a BIG question, however. The scandal involving mutual fund
market timing involved, primarily "late trading" which allowed certain
insiders to take advantage of post-market close news or information.
This is not the type of information that the major market timing
newsletters dispensed to their readers. When I think of the
market-timing mutual fund scandal, a good reference is the following:

 "THIRTY-SIX COUNT INDICTMENT CHARGES MUTUAL FUND MARKET TIMING AND
LATE TRADING SCHEME" http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/fls/late%20trading.html
 
* Please let it be understood that the customer was advised (in an
earlier answer to this multi-part question) that there was a major
difference between the market timing scandal and the services offered
by mutual fund newsletters and computer switch programs which were
outlined in the answer.

umiat