THE CONCEPT
 
Atomic Trading Concept was developed by Bloomberg developer, C. N. Plapcianu.

Born and raised in Romania, Plapcianu studied structural engineering before moving to Switzerland to earn a Master in International Business degree. He is a member of the Society of Technical Analysts in London, and has worked as a trader, developer, and researcher.

Plapcianu developed the Atomic Trading Concept system during three years of intensive study of mathematics, physics, music, and natural systems. He has held seminars for Trader’s World, written for the Society of Technical Analyst’s quarterly magazine, and consulted for private clients. His indicators are currently active on Bloomberg terminals.
 

THE MISSION
 
Our mission is to develop, program and offer our customers state of the art financial indicators, based on studies of mathematics, physics, music, and natural systems.

“I am an actual believer in objectivity and sound premises, opposed to market trends ending in gloom and despair or ecstasy and optimism. Manifested feelings can never be mingled with order in process of becoming, but the former implacably are achieved when order has dawned ration, quality being irrefutably an aftermath of resonating quantities. I indulge the reader to empirically test that my method can be classified as purely objective without any trail of feeling manifested throughout the process of becoming and to reap its fruits.”

- C. N. Plapcianu on “Qualitative or Quantitative“( Trader’s World, issue #52)


THE VISION
   
The search for order within chaos is a quest that stretches back to the earliest reaches of human thought. Since ancient man’s first development of science and philosophy, two fundamental positions have vied for dominance. One claims randomness to be the underlying factor of the universe, while the other argues that order pervades this entire cosmos, and that the perception of randomness is merely an artifact of an ignorance yet to be penetrated. 

As humanity advances from one scientific revolution to the next, from Renaissance to Enlightenment, through Einstein’s Relativity to high energy particle physics, pushing ever forward into sciences of greater order like Chaos and Complexity Theory, Superstring Theory, and M Theory, one thing is forever assured, that where once chaos reigned, now order dominates!

Yet still we see the argument of these random theorists persist within fields that their limited viewpoints are incapable of penetrating, arguing with all the passion of the religious fundamentalist, that the claim of order in some complex systems is even anti-scientific, when in reality, such discovery represents the epitome of scientific method.  So too does the modern financial analyst, who believes in Random Walk Theory, fail to perceive the subtle designs behind the complex system of the financial markets, denying even the possibility of order because his limited tools are incapable of measuring it.

And belief this is, for when order is proven to exist where before was only randomness, the light of knowledge illuminates the Truth, and no logical mind will again bend to such false interpretations, once such truth has been revealed. Only the irrationality of indoctrinated belief can hold something to be random which the tools of science and mathematics have proven to be ordered. The intent of this research is to shed the light of science into the chaos of randomness and to prove, once and for all, that order reigns in the financial markets, and that Random Walk Theory is merely the residual belief of an ignorant past incapable of penetrating the complexities of this abstract system.  It has the potential to inspire a new era of technical analysis, because it fundamentally defines every possible variant of pattern and swing, mathematically proving the financial markets to be an Absolute Deterministic System.

AUTHOR’S BACKGROUND & HISTORY

With a background in structural engineering and a Master’s degree in business, Plapcianu’s interest in the financial markets began with a brief study of fundamental analysis, which yielded little fruit, but lead to his discovery of technical analysis, an approach of greater scientific application which better suited his engineering based mind.

While doing a certification with the Society of Technical Analysts, he came across one small section on the work of W. D. Gann, in particular a reference to the 1909 Ticker Interview wherein Gann, while being monitored by an auditor, produced 1000% return with a 92% success rate in 25 days.  These results fell so far outside the traditional norms or trading that Plapcianu's interest immediately turned away from standard technical analysis to an exhaustive search for a more fundamental and scientific system of mathematical analysis and forecasting such as that which was suggested to exist by this famous trader.

This led him to work of Dr. Jerome Baumring, the only known person to have thoroughly understood the scientific elements of Gann’s system, and who addressed the topics that were said by Gann to be the essence of his scientific system. Dr. Baumring presented a series of educational seminars back in the late-1980’s through the Investment Centre Bookstore in Los Angeles, CA, which were attended by approximately 100 students over the 5 years he taught them.

Baumring’s teaching style was highly complex and extremely demanding, requiring a PhD level of research, covering hundreds of books and requiring 1000’s of hours of hand charting and market research. These demands left only a few students with the determination and intelligence to persevere on their own to the conclusion of the work, with its goal of cracking Gann’s original system.  But there were a few who did reach this goal, and those few further confirmed the claims of both Gann and Baumring, that there was a definitive order behind the markets, which could be understood and used to forecast and trade with extraordinary results. 

Plapcianu set out to uncover this system with a dedication and intensity that was unmatched by any before him, devouring Baumring’s essential reading list, and even going so far as to fly his past college mathematics and physics professors to Geneva to give him private tutorials on advanced subjects such as Relativity Theory, spherical astronomy and topics in advanced mathematics. Often he would describe elements of the market phenomena that he was attempting to quantify to his math professors, asking what forms of mathematics would be best suited to model it, and would then study those mathematical systems and apply them to his research. For about four years, this deep research continued, with ongoing breakthroughs and insights along the way.

Slowly but surely the mechanics of the system began to take a more crystalized form. As these mechanics took form, he continuously worked to distill them into algorithmic sequences that could be used to quantify the phenomena, and which could be programmed, so as to incorporate the system into an automated set of indicators which would model and forecast the markets using these mathematical principles.

His first programmed indicator was initially made available through Bloomberg Financial, where Plapcianu was one of the 15 official software developers.  This process was long and convoluted as the algorithms were ongoingly developed and perfected, requiring reprogramming over 30 times in the course of a few years, continually enhancing the power of their output. The statistical results of the final elaboration of his Bloomberg indicator (which is the Beta version of Hyperbolic 1) are presented in our statistical results section, demonstrating the returns that the first algorithm was able to produce through a fully automated “black box” signal generating system.

The returns generated by the automated trend following system, Hyperbolic (Beta) were excellent, producing, at worst, returns that were equivalent to the best money managers on Wall Street, in the 20-30% range, and when backtested to determine markets and time frames that were more responsive to the algorithms, would produce returns 10 times greater than that in many markets, in the 100-500% range, using no leverage.

However a problem arose in providing these tools only as a “black box” indicators, generating purely automated trading signals.  Many professional traders and institutional managers who used Bloomberg were not able to implement a “black box” system where they could not validate the nature of the signals for their trading, leading to ongoing requests to provide the actual code behind the algorithms. This led Plapcianu to realize that the only way to effectively make available his automated indicators would be to accompany them with a series of instructional courses or technical manuals that would present the foundational ideas behind the tools, so that professionals could validate the technology or program it for themselves. These instructional courses are now being made available as The Square, The Triangle and The Circle, each to accompany the progressive levels of his 2 algorithms, the Hyperbolic and the Circular allowing a full understanding of the technology behind the “black box”.