At the November Trader’s Expo in Las Vegas, the Market Technicians Association hosted a panel discussion on the current market environment. The event was very well received, with a standing room only crowd of about 150 attending in person and
another 80 viewing the live webcast. It was among the best attended events at the three-day seminar. 

Ken Tower, CMT, was the first presenter. He began by making a simple point. “This should be a banner year for investors using technical tools. Volatility has been tremendous and it has been a strongly trending market. Yet too many have their heads hung low. Why? How did we miss so much opportunity?”

While this question clearly applied to the individual investors who attended the Trader’s Expo, the large losses incurred by hedge funds and institutions

The Financial Management Association (FMA) at Florida International University was privileged to have Barry Sine present at our October 15th meeting. His presentation was on technical analysis, an area with mixed emotions, to say the least. Attendees of the meeting ranged from freshman to faculty and everyone in between. Barry gave a 45-minute presentation, which covered the history of technical analysis, key terms, trends, and patterns. He wrapped up his presentation by analyzing securities that some of the students had selected. The full presentation including the slide show is available at the FMA website at www.fiufma.org/investments.

How did the attendees react to such a topic? Amazed! When speaking with some of the members

The competition for the 2009 Charles H. Dow Award is open. The Award for excellence and creativity in technical analysis has been presented since 1994, and today is the most significant writing competition in the field. The recipients of the Award are among the most notable market technicians. The success of the Award has resulted in an enhanced cash prize.

The winning author will receive a cash prize of $4,000.00 and will be invited to present their paper at an MTA seminar or chapter meeting. The paper or a summary may be published in the MTA’s Journal of Technical Analysis, Technically Speaking newsletter, and posted to mta.org. At the discretion of the judging panel, the authors of runner-up papers will receive certificates.

The last day to submit papers is February 6, 2009, and the winner will be selected on or before May 8, 2009. The 2009 guidelines (below) and copies of all

The book Beyond Greed and Fear:

Understanding Behavioral Finance and the Psychology of Investing by Hersh Shefrin was recently added to the TAN Program reading list. The book provides a solid overview of the heuristics that form the core of this field and addresses the impact of psychology on the investment decision making process on the individual, professional, and institutional investors.

In discussing technical analysis, Shefrin recounts how Ralph Acampora made an amazingly accurate market call in 1998 and was blamed by many for single-handedly causing a market crash in August of that year.

During that time, Ralph was the widely respected and followed technician for Prudential Securities. Ralph recalls that he had been travelling on a camera safari that July, and when he got back, CNBC anchor Ron Insana called to schedule a short interview. On August 3, 1998, Ralph told the audience that he was starting to see signs of

This is the first in what we hope will be a series of articles on business models that successful technicians employ.

At the recent Trader’s Expo in Las Vegas, Toni Hansen gave a presentation entitled “A Complete Guide to Momentum Position Trading and Investing with Toni Hansen.” Although she was speaking at 8 AM on a Saturday morning in Vegas, she drew a large and enthusiastic crowd and the majority of attendees were familiar with her work.

Toni is a self-trained market technician who has been actively trading the markets for about twelve years. Like many successful technicians, she came to the field from a seemingly unrelated endeavor. While studying archeology, she noticed that stock charts tended to have patterns and treated the charts as a logic problem to solve – similar to the approach she would apply to an archeological puzzle. So, by day she studied ancient artifacts and at night,