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John Johnson

System Developer

Program(s) Developed: RJTI Charts Crude Oil 60 BANG

Interviewed by Robin Ravel of Striker Securities, Inc.

Chicago-based John Johnson started on the trading floors of Chicago Board of Trade in 1981 and today is a successful system developer at Striker with a crude oil system up 36% as of May 1, 2017. Over his 35-year industry career John has been involved with Commodity Trading Advisors and also ran his own commodity brokerage firm. Mr. Johnson also has a background in music and the only developer we have known that has roots in Chicago and the trading floors the likes similar to Dan Neenan, Chris Dickerson, Martin Lembak, and William Gallwas. The trading systems by John Johnson have over 1-year actual track records at Striker as of this interview.

Robin Ravel: How did the idea of developing automated trading systems come to you, is it related to your background?

John Johnson: I first developed the system back in 1985 and utilized it manually for the Financial Futures on the CBOT and eventually spanned the utilization of it to other markets for Currencies and especially the Indices.

Robin Ravel: How long have you been in the industry and did you have any experience at CBOT, CME or other exchange?

John Johnson: I first started as a runner at the CBOT back in 1981 and became an arb-clerk. The opportunity allowed me to learn from the institutional traders and all the exposure to many of the top traders in the industry on the CME and CBOT that were on the trading floors at the time. It was an amazing thing to be standing right in front of the S&P 500 Futures Pit in 1987 which also helped to shape my understanding of how markets might work. It became a challenge for me to fiqure out how the top traders could walk away with thousands and thousands of dollar from trading simply from feel and any fundamental news that may have come through the wire while trading in the pits. I eventually started hand plotting point and figure charts after my manager gave me a charting book and spent a lot of money betting with other analyst as to who could pick direction for the day or a high or low. Instead of playing baseball or basketball or chasing beautiful women I spent my time learning charts and the studies like Gann, Fibonacci, Vertical -Horizontal counting and my greatest study of music. So I've been in the business for over 35 years and have held many demanding positions such as CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) and I ran my own IB for over 13 years.

Robin Ravel: Do you have any partners? If yes, who are they and what are their expertise? If not, why choosing to conduct this business on your own?

John Johnson: I do not have any partners that help me write but I do have a few staffers to assist in answering questions. There just has never been a need to depend or to utilize any one else to help me apply techniques.

Robin Ravel: What are the researches behind RJTI Charts trading systems? How long does it take you to implement one system?

John Johnson: I have a music background of 35 years too which helped me to realize some time ago that each market has it's own pulse and beat and I combined my experience of trading, analysis, music to approach markets with the realization that Fundamentals can not be factored to the 100 percentile but because we are dealing with numbers we can always through factoring get a 100% summary or close to it. So I'm firmly a Technician applied approach to writing algorithms. It does not take me long at all since I tend to use the same approach for all markets.

Robin Ravel: You first introduced RJTICharts Crude Oil 60 Bang through Striker, what are the characteristics of this system?

John Johnson: It is a combination of many years of trading floor experience, trading, technical analysis and music. I developed the system to commit to a trade only if the consensus has committed. More than likely this is institutional commitment. So the system filters through 5-7 stages to verify that such commitment has occurred by the possible potential institutional acts and since the system waits a lot of the time to confirm. When the probability rises that the support or resistance will be there because of the commitment from the potential institutional participants and then such offers the momentum to move the trade favorable or to defend letting the trade get into trouble. So in so many ways I'm using the possible institutional commitments as my favor or defense base solely on numbers not the amount of contracts traded. Yet a lot of times the trading system will identify when the potential institutional commitments might have over extended themselves and trades opposite. LOL

Robin Ravel: Do you plan on developing more systems in the future, and if so, which futures contract will the systems be trading?

John Johnson: We have many strategies just ready to be rolled out or if one wants to trade it. We have a system strategy for about 40 different Commodities with many different time frames. All of our strategies are written identical to our CRUDE OIL 60 BANG Trading System and if one was to explore our website they would find many other surprising opportunities for potential reward, RJTICHARTS.com. Driven by Infinite Wisdom and its Proprietary Trading Systems !

This interview is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a solicitation of any kind. Trade only with risk capital. The risk of trading can be substantial and each investor and/or trader must consider whether trading systems are a suitable investment.