Robert Clifford Pelletier

Robert Clifford "Bob" Pelletier (May 8, 1933 – June 23, 2016) was an American entrepreneur and businessman. He was a pioneer of financial market data and trading analysis and the founder and CEO of Commodity Systems Inc.

Early life Pelletier had a background in statistics, probability theory, and analytical modeling, worked in the Advanced Analytical Methods Laboratories at the General Electric Co. in New York, and consulted for the US Navy in Hawaii under Planning Research Corp.

Market data Business In 1969, Pelletier founded Commodity Systems, Inc., also known as CSI Data. The corporate headquarters were soon established in Boca Raton, Florida. Pelletier was one of the first users of the Mitel SX-50 phone switching system, which he used to feed data to his customers from four Texas Instruments 990 microcomputers and one Convergent Technologies supermicrocomputer.

Perpetual Contracts In 1970, Pelletier developed a continuous price series which was trademarked "Perpetual Contracts". It is a weighted average between two futures contracts. It provided a smooth series that was ideal for back-testing futures trading systems.