The LSE Directory / Charting platforms
Optuma is a Windows desktop technical analysis and charting platform for traders and analysts covering global equities, indices, forex, commodities, cryptocurrencies and economic data. The software provides single and multi security charting, watchlists, scanning, alerting and backtesting, and bundles end of day data for more than 40 global exchanges (with third party real time feed connections available), spanning equities, commodities, indices, forex, select cryptocurrencies, fundamental data, economic data and COT reports. Its specialisation is cross market, relative strength analysis rather than single stock charting alone: the platform is built around Relative Rotation Graphs (RRG), a visualisation of how a group of securities rotate in relative strength and momentum versus a benchmark, alongside Gann analysis tools and swing and seasonality charting. A proprietary no code scripting layer, described by the company as usable "as simple as excel formulas," lets users build custom scans and indicators without programming. Optuma sells to three segments: private traders managing their own capital, professional analysts managing client money, and enterprise analysts at larger funds, and pairs the software with education (including CMT exam preparation courses) and chartbook publishing, positioning itself as a combined software, data and education vendor rather than a pure charting tool or a market data API provider. The company was founded in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia in 1996 by Mathew Verdouw, a computer systems engineer, under the name Market Analyst; it later took the Optuma name. In 1997, technical analyst Ray Barros became an early reseller and had his Barros Swings methodology built into the software, a partnership model the company still uses with other analyst-educators. The product has been rewritten from scratch four times over its history, most recently as Market Analyst 7 (development started 2009, released 2012) and as Optuma 2.0 in 2021. Mathew Verdouw remains the company's CEO and the firm is still headquartered in Brisbane.
