Interview  |  SEP 2002

Interview: David Stendahl by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Interview: David Stendahl by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan David Stendahl is an author, a sometime contributor to STOCKS & COMMODITIES, and an authority in the field of portfolio construction and system design. He has lectured at numerous national and international conferences and written articles on evaluation and money management techniques. Stendahl also cocreated various performance analysis software packages, including Performance Summary Plus (now incorporated into TradeStation). Currently, Stendahl comanages Landmark Asset Management, an investment firm that specializes in investing in the global futures markets. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan interviewed Stendahl on July 3, 2002, via telephone. How did you get started trading? I’ve always been interested in trading, and I realized a long time ago I wanted to be systematic in my approach. So over the last 15 years I’ve developed a lot of trading systems based on my own work. I took a hiatus from trading while I was trying to improve the analysis of my performance. I thought I had good systems, but I lacked the confidence to actually trade them at certain stages. If you weren’t trading, what did you do? I started to develop a number of software applications that would allow me to evaluate my systems in greater detail. Most notably, I cocreated the system backtester that you can find in TradeStation. Soon, though, I got hungry to trade full-time again.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan