TradeStation let a trader type a rule in near-plain English, test it against years of market history, and then watch it fire signals live. Omega Research, run by two brothers in Miami, released it in 1991. Its EasyLanguage made strategy programming open to people who were not programmers. When the company went public in October 1997, day traders and online brokers were multiplying, and Omega Research sold the tools serious traders used to look for an edge.

The Cruz Brothers

William and Ralph Cruz founded Omega Research in Florida in 1982. Their products included TradeStation, OptionStation and SuperCharts. The bet was that individual traders would pay for the kind of charting and back-testing tools that professional desks built for themselves. The company sold software licenses and data services, and it grew with the spread of fast PCs and real-time market data into homes and small trading firms.

From Software to Broker

Omega Research priced its offering at $11 a share in October 1997 and listed on Nasdaq. In 2000 it bought an online brokerage, onlinetradinginc.com, so customers could send orders straight from its software. The company renamed itself TradeStation Group in 2001 and became a broker as much as a software maker. In 2011 the Japanese online brokerage Monex Group bought TradeStation Group.

Cover: Physiognomy of the Stock Exchange. The despair of the baissier and the triumph of the haussier - or crying and laughing, plate 440 from Actualités, Honoré-Victorin Daumier. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for faces on the stock exchange floor (traders and their tools).