I am no expert in creativity, but most people that I speak with about the analysis of the stock market seem to have a very narrow sense of the possibilities. Perhaps it is the tools and software that have a heavy concentration on all the “standard” indicators – from the world of technical analysis – that helps to create this analytical blindness. Playing with the multitude of technical indicators that are part of your typical stock market software is a lot of fun – no question! I have spend hours – days – months – years playing with the MetaStocks and the TradeStations of the analytical world, but honestly the best tool I had was Lotus 123. Actually, the very first software I used to play with stock price data was dBase III, but I didn’t get too far with it at the time. Where I really first felt the creative juices flow was when I got Lotus 123 (this was in DOS) working with a bunch of data I downloaded from Dow Jones – downloaded using my sweet 2400 baud modem that would never connect above 1200…

Before I continue to go on and on and on about walking to school uphill and in the snow and without shoes….

The point I want to make is – the first time I played around with stock price data was in a spreadsheet program. I didn’t have CCI, MACD, RSI or any other conventional technical indicator canned and ready for use. I explored and played with the data in the unconstrained (at least to my technical ability at the time – once I learned BASIC better, I grew out of Lotus quickly) environment that a spreadsheet can provide. Not that access to technical tools “constrains” the user, but the ease and ready access to these indicators can slow the creativity process. In fact, I imagine most technical analysis tools these days give the user a great deal of flexibility in designing new indicators of unlimited complexity. How many people take advantage of that capability? I imagine very few people go that route. I should say, take advantage in a creative and innovative way.

So, that being said – I am looking forward to using DeepMarket as a really big whiteboard to brainstorm interesting ideas, creative analysis and innovative tools. To the point of ridiculousness. Some ideas may seem (or will be) silly. That’s okay – this is all about the imaginative and cool new ways to look at the data.