The financial markets industry is at the same crossroads as the automotive industry in the late 1970s. Margins are collapsing and customization is rapidly increasing. The automotive industry turned to quality and its no coincidence that in the money management industry many of the spectacular failures have been due largely to problems in quality control. The financial industry in on the verge of a quality revolution.

New and old firms alike are creating new investment vehicles and new strategies that are radically changing the nature of the industry. To compete, mutual funds, hedge fund industries, banks and proprietary trading firms are being forced to quicklyy research, test and implement trade selection and execution systems. And, just as in the early stages of factory automation, quality suffers and leads to defects. Many financial firms fall short of quality, lacking processes and methodologies for proper development and evaluation of trading and investment systems.

Authors Kumiega and Van Vliet present a new step-by-step methodology for such development. Their methodology (called K