About Us

StockRaptor grew out of a collaboration among four people who had worked together for over a decade in the oil and gas business. The skills inventory of the team consisted of geology, petrophysics, economics, finance, and software development. They developed a terrific specialized PC software system to tackle some of the most difficult types of data analysis problems encountered in the evaluation of oil and gas reservoirs. The software was designed to process data interactively or in large unattended batch processes from very large databases consisting of information from hundreds or even thousands of oil and gas wells. The software was honed and perfected through use in their consulting business until it could quickly handle any problem they encountered. It was simple to teach, ran fast, and the output was easy to evaluate.

When the principals of the company began to consider an aggressive investment program in the stock market, they were shocked at the high cost and performance limitations of the existing stock charting programs. Having developed similar technology in a highly competitive market, they began to consider redirecting their entire business effort. The principles of technical analysis of stocks and the evaluation of oil well log analysis, also known as petrophysics, are quite similar. In both cases, the analyst must process large quantities of data and generate quantitive indications of value. The results must be in a form that can be viewed, comprehended, and acted upon with the least amount of interpretive effort.

The petrophysical software that they had developed for so many years allowed the analyst to perform complex calculations on massive amounts of data in the depth domain. Stock analysis requires complex calculations on massive amounts of data in the time and frequency domains. The database issues are basically identical and the very large number of stocks pose the same challenges as performing similar caluclations on thousands of wells in a large oil field. They realized that they could take many of the ideas from the oil and gas software and meet all existing expectations for technical anlaysis software. They could also create an entirely new way of gathering and analyzing stock price data. Out of this, StockRaptor and its suite of products was hatched.

The team knew that StockRaptor must be developed around the analytical methods that they had previously perfected, but with an entirely modern code and utility structure since they developed their oil and gas software at a time when program development utilities varied widely in quality and were rapidly evolving. One of the reasons that StockRaptor soars instead of flapping its wings in the dust is that the entire body of code was developed without concern for the preservation of legacy code. All StockRaptor products are written using the latest in programming tools and systems. We have access to all the powerful new utilities and we aren't going to get stuck in any "time warps" with old code that we can't update.

Many existing stock charting systems are based on computer code that was written long ago. These legacy systems often force the user to do things in an old-fashioned "computer friendly" way instead of a more modern "user-friendly" way. Software developers that are required to preserve the functionality of legacy code must spend extensive time and money maintaining the compatability of the legacy logic and the modern front end. This leads to excessive overhead and higher product cost to you. By preserving our analytical methods but building the software from scratch using the newest tools, we have insured that this isn't going to happen with StockRaptor products. Making this committment resulted in a delayed entry into the market place for StockRaptor. However, you can be assured, when you buy our system, that it will maintain its technical edge and that you can stay with it for the long haul. When you acquire StockRaptor, compare it to older, much more expensive, legacy code based products.

About the StockRaptor Team

About Tom

Tom began investing with one share of Texaco when he was 12. Over the years, he has worked with many of the stock investing systems that are out there. He is also an excellent progammer and a database wizard. While they worked for a major Oil and Gas company in the 1980's, Tom helped Rick and a team of consultants begin to develop a petrophysical analysis software package that became popular thorughout the oil and gas industry. Their paths crossed again when he joined up with Rick and Deborah to develop a highly advanced oil and gas specialty software system that was sold to major oil and gas companies and used in their consulting practice. Through this and other projects Tom has stayed high on the learning curve of new technologies for the PC, now bringing over 20 years of scientific and technological software development to our suite of stock market technical analysis tools and utilities.

About Joe

Joe has been a Certified Financial Planner and has worked in the financial arena for over 30 years, including agricultural accounting, business start-up, development, and management, tax preparation, and stock brokering. Throughout his career he has participated in the stock market and has developed an understanding of the wide range of investment vehicles available as well as considerable expertise in technical analysis. One of Joe's favorite pass times is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various analysis and trading methods that are published in trade journals.

About Rick

Rick has been a geologist and well log analyst in the oil and gas industry for thirty years. During his tenure as chief petrophysical engineer for a major oil and gas company and later while running a consulting business, he developed advanced analytical methods for evaluating complex physical measurements to determine the presence of hydrocarbons in oil and gas wells. He has introduced and taught systematic methods for building large databases and simplifying the solution of complex and difficult problems. Much of the impetus for the development of StockRaptor products came from his frustration with existing stock analysis programs and his conviction, based on his co-development of oil and gas software, that "there has got to be a better way".

About Deborah

Deborah has been a geologist, log analyst, and computer specialist in the oil business for over 20 years and co-managed the consulting business with Rick. She was one of the first to catch the "computer wave" in the oil business and has developed extensive expertise in the creation and management of massive databases for geological mapping. She co-developed the oil and gas software with Rick and Tom and brings her computer expertise to StockRaptor in helping with product development and testing.