What follows is a long personal reflection on how Ian got to be in North America that I pulled together this morning in reflecting on the loss of an old friend for some younger friends who did not get to know him very well.
Ian Notley – some lesser known background to a 35 year friendship.
In 1973, I was writing Deliberations, the newsletter, for the institutional boutique, Draper Dobie & Co, in Toronto, where we had the first privately owned computer system dedicated to streaming stock exchange data. The Chairman of the firm, David Knight was an avid chartist, and fully supportive of anything in pursuit of data that Tony Lash and his crew could generate from those machines. Those machines provided the original stock quotes that appeared on Canadian cable TV for Rogers.
It seems so simple now, but it was a Eureka moment back then to suggest that maybe prices that were down should be shown in red, green for up, and yellow for unchanged. That was 1974…
On a visit to his mining empire interests in Australia, David Knight discovered that a newly acquired subsidiary included a fellow by the name of Ian Notley who had traded greasy wool futures on the floor in Sydney, and was teaching technical analysis at night.
David called from Sydney with the suggestion that Ian should come up to visit in Toronto and see if we might work together to build on the massive amount of data our computers were generating. It was a great fit, and we quickly discovered the joys of having a machine calculate Coppock curves on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual basis to illustrate various cycles. We had both been laboriously calculating them by hand on nearly identical worksheets we had independently designed on 11×17 inch paper, drawn from Sedge’s original Barron’s article back in 1961.
We quickly discovered that we were both “data packrats” with a bent for market history, who shared an international perspective on markets that was quite unique in those days. Apart from Bank Credit Analyst, I don’t think there was another newsletter in North America that included charts of London’s old FT-30 and Tokyo, along with TSE and NY charts. On that theme, I showed him my theory of Canada lagging the US market at cycle turns that was later published in Barron’s in 1976, and he showed me work he had done showing that when the Brit’s came storming into Aussie markets, that was the last fling of the cycle. That resource markets tend to be cycle laggards has subsequently become rather well known from that birthing process in Toronto 35 years ago.
He went back to Australia after several months in Toronto, to marry Pat, and then move to Toronto permanently. (After a few too many cold Toronto winters, Pat laid down the law and they moved to the slightly warmer climate of the US, ending up in Connecticut years later.)
I left Draper Dobie in late 1974 to go out on my own with Deliberations, and Ian stayed on to create what became known as the Trend & Cycle Department, greatly increasing the volume of his printed output, and the firm assigned a full-time sales rep, Don Sheppard, to market Ian’s work institutionally. Many years later John Brooks, and then Jonathon Arter came on board to market his work, along with a European network he had developed.
Ian also played a role in introducing Sedge Coppock’s service, Trendex, into Australia in the late 1960’s and remained a friend of Sedge Coppock for the rest of his life. In 1974, when Sedge was winding Trendex down, he visited with us in Toronto with the idea of our firm acquiring his business. But insightful to the loyalty of Sedge for his staff, there was one non-negotiable condition we couldn’t agree on, and that was we must move lock-stock & barrel to San Antonio, TX, keep on all of his staff until they chose to retire and maintain his office.
Draper Dobie ended up as part of Dominion Securities, and later on RBC acquired DS. In the later 1980’s, Ian went out on his own, forming Yelton Fiscal to become an independent research provider.
Ian was the most dedicated data bug I’ve known, (with John Carder a serious rival), long before the internet and assorted data services evolved to make it relatively easier to track down anything anywhere. From the Draper Dobie days and the Tony Lash computer crew, he learned early on that you hire the best qualified technical support, and keep them inspired, which he did all the way along. If he heard of a market related number that existed, his staff would track it down and maintain it.
He was tireless in his supporting role as a founder of the CSTA, and IFTA.
The Walkabout session of round tables with dedicated topics as a brilliant ice-breaker at the start of every conference was his unique creation.
At the IFTA Conference in Sharm El-Sheik, Egypt last November, he presided over his final walkabout, and also drafted me at the last minute for a closing panel session with Robin Griffiths & Martin Pring to bring “the two Ian’s” back together on a stage one last time. Sadly it was to be his final appearance, but in conversations we had there and over a subsequent lunch in Toronto, I know he really enjoyed it and was terribly proud of how IFTA had evolved. Knowing that his end was in sight, he outlined his succession plans to me, to make sure that his data base and his work would be carried on, and I’m sure it will be, very successfully.
The world of TA is a richer place for the unrelenting dedication Ian contributed to our field.
35 years later, it just doesn’t feel like 1973 was all that long ago, but all those years makes it even more difficult to have to say Good Bye to an old friend who’s contributions will live on and on.
Table 1: Stocks meeting all of these tests are bought.
Table 2: These results were reported on a weekly basis and could have been duplicated by an individual investor
Table 3: New buy and sell criteria presented by Kirkpatrick.
