TradeStation acquires portfolio strategy testing technology from Rina

The products acquired include all versions of Portfolio Maestro, together with many of Rina's legacy portfolio testing, reporting and analysis products. Portfolio Maestro will be seamlessly integrated with TradeStation's award-winning, industry-leading, trading strategy design, back-testing and automation platform.

"Portfolio testing has been one of the most requested features by TradeStation customers for several years, so it is very exciting soon to be able to provide our clients with a professional-level, portfolio back-testing solution," said John Bartleman, TradeStation Securities' Vice President of Product Management. "No other platform enables the range of portfolio testing that Portfolio Maestro offers. Once fully integrated and rolled-out as an update to TradeStation Version 9.0, traders will have the ability to test any number of strategies and symbol lists and time intervals, test across a portfolio using strategies that reference multiple symbols (such as pairs and inter-market analysis), rank symbols in their portfolios with user-defined criteria and functions, optimize the parameters of any or all of their portfolios' strategies, and create detailed statistical reports and charts to analyze the portfolio back-tested results. We expect to begin our roll-out of TradeStation Version 9.0 within the next few months and to offer the Portfolio Maestro update to Version 9.0 by the earlier part of next year."

"Rina has been developing products for use with TradeStation for many years, and Portfolio Maestro was no exception," said Leo Zamansky, the leading principal of Rina. "Once Portfolio Maestro is released within the extremely powerful functionality in the upcoming TradeStation Version 9.0, I believe that TradeStation will have distanced itself from any competitor by miles, as TradeStation will now offer the leading, state-of-the-art trading platform for the design, testing, optimization and automated execution of both individual-asset-bassed and portfolio-based trading strategies, both technical and fundamental."

One of the lead inventors of Portfolio Maestro will be assisting the company as a part-time consultant for at least one year (and up to three years, if TradeStation so elects) and the other lead inventor will be joining TradeStation as a full-time employee under a three-year employment agreement. The purchase was made by TradeStation Technologies, Inc., the trading software development subsidiary of TradeStation Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:TRAD - News) which develops and owns TradeStation's proprietary software, technology and intellectual property. The total purchase price was $5 Million, $4,208,000 in cash paid at closing and $792,000 paid in newly-issued shares of TradeStation Group, Inc. common stock at closing (then distributed immediately following closing to the two "lead-inventor" beneficial owners of Rina Technologies, subject to phased two- or three-year lock-up periods).