1. A system for extracting historical market information identifying recurring trends relating to securities traded in a market, the system comprising: a computer having a digital storage medium; a computer data base operable with said computer for organizing historical market information according to attributes; means for providing a first menu of attributes for presentation in a report; means for providing a second menu for selecting a condition defining temporal fluctuations of the attributes; means for selecting one or more attributes from said first menu providing a SHOW ATTRIBUTE query construction; means for selecting one or more conditions from said second menu providing a WHEN CONDITION query construction; means for limiting said WHEN CONDITION selecting means to a time interval during which said conditions are satisfied for a predetermined number of occurrences; means for retrieving, according to said selected SHOW ATTRIBUTE-WHEN CONDITION query construction and said limiting means, the selected attributes of the computer data base for each point in history corresponding to the satisfaction of the selected conditions; and means for generating, for each point in history according to the satisfaction of the selected conditions, a report presentation for each of the retrieved attributes, whereby a plurality of report presentations is generated, one for each point in history satisfying the selected conditions, allowing comparison among said plurality of report presentations for identifying recurring trends relating to the commodities traded in the market.