Jeff McDowell, CMT, CCEA
Chartered Market Technician
Certified Cost Estimator/Analyst
30+ years experience
Technical Analysis
Empirical Research
Quantitative Innovation
PAPERS
A Measure of Market Incertitude
Published in the Journal of Technical Analysis, Issue 74, Fall 2024
An introduction to a novel approach to assessing market strength by exploring whether today’s market resembles yesterday’s one. Building on traditional breadth and diffusion measures, the paper proposes a more granular metric that evolves into an indicator and oscillator, providing analysts with additional tools for detecting shifts in market character. The paper assesses the usefulness of these signal cases in identifying potential trend exhaustion and correction phases.
Data With A Purpose: Technical Data Initiative
Presented to the ICEAA Training Workshop 2021
Technical characteristics are known to influence cost and as such are integral to cost estimating methods. Cost-driver data is an enduring cost community need yet is often an afterthought to cost data collection. This presentation is an overview of CADE’s Technical Data Report (TDR) to systemically capture this must-needed information as part of the CSDR process. Also a sample Power BI case will illustrate the powerful analysis empowered by integrating TDR data with FlexFile cost data.
Tabular CARDs: Orderly Data for the Cost Community
Presented to the ICEAA Training Workshop 2018
Recent CAPE guidance has brought positive exciting change to the Cost Analysis Requirements Description (CARD). This change is a new focus on standardized program data content via workbook templates balanced with reduced-scope narrative content. This paper demystifies the new CARD templates by describing each of the tables emphasizing how they were designed to satisfy enduring and recurring cost estimator needs. Also their relevance to MIL-STD-881D Product Extensions and CSDR Plan Standards will be presented.
Joint Cost Schedule Risk and Uncertainty Handbook
Presented to the ICEAA Training Workshop 2013
The Cost Risk and Uncertainty Handbook (CRUH), published by the Air Force Cost Analysis Agency (AFCAA) in July 2007, is a reference for approved methods, practices, and reporting requirements needed to produce a realistic, defendable cost uncertainty analysis. CRUH addresses the question “how to do it”. CRUAMM provides guidance on “what to base it on” – that is, it provides data and data-driven uncertainty distributions for potential use in your cost model or for use as cross-checks. This paper will present a status on development of this supplement to the AFCAA CRUH.
Choosing the right uncertainty distributions for your cost risk analysis is critical. The purpose of the CRUAMM is to provide the analyst a “place to start” and a source of distributions based upon data-driven analysis. CRUH provided broad, expert opinion suitable for the most generic of analysis. CRUAMM is designed to provide commodity specific guidance at various levels within the commodity WBS, CRUAMM guidance introduces the principle of “orders of dispersion”. Uncertainty is quantified by measuring dispersion in observed data sets at different levels of detail. In the process, a custom curve-fitting tool was developed to facilitate analysis of hundreds of data sets to generate the recommended distribution and the parameters that will become the uncertainty model inputs.
This paper summarizes the 17 Key Risk areas discussed in the CRUAMM, the data collected to date, the analytical curve-fitting framework, emerging results, how to make use of it in a Crystal Ball, @Risk or ACEIT model and the path forward.
Cost Modeling Data Standards for Model Integration
Presented to the ICEAA Training Workshop 2007
The objective of the work described in this paper is to develop data exchange mechanisms necessary to revolutionize the efficiency and accuracy of cost estimating through automated data exchanges with design and performance models and simulations. This development is intended as an early step towards fully integrating cost estimating into the modeling and simulation (M&S) domain, enhancing the prediction of the affordability of future systems, and the understanding of the costs of alternatives courses of action and operational scenarios. The paper will describe progress to date and present the data standards in the form of XML schemas, the highlight of which will be a generalized Cost Modeling Object. This paper will be of interest to organizations and analysts interested in cost as an output or a constraint in system design models and simulations.
This work supports the goal of the Army’s Simulation & Modeling for Acquisition, Requirements and Training (SMART) costing initiative, which is to develop performance-based cost estimating capabilities linked to engineering design tools to enable cost trades optimizing performance for a given cost. The Army’s Office of Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army – Cost & Economic (ODASA-CE), as sponsor of this effort, is pursuing standard naming conventions with common semantics and structure for the cost analysis domain. The benefit will be to enhance the determination of systems’ affordability by facilitating the discovery, automated composition, and remote invocation of cost estimating tools by system performance and design models in the M&S domains.
ABOUT ME
Quantitative Analyst
Jeff McDowell is a highly regarded figure in quantitative analysis, with a distinguished track record of innovation and impact across multiple domains. As the founder of Synaptric Capital LLC, he has been at the forefront of empirical research, advancing the development and application of data-driven methodologies. He has noted expertise in data modeling, risk metrics, life-cycle cost estimating, statistical analysis, and the development of technical indicators.
