Award Winners
The volunteers of the MTA are the people who make the organization run. With a staff of 6 and a membership of 2500, the MTA could not run without the active participation and frankly the selfless giving of the volunteer time of so many people. From the board to the committees to the grading to the speaking engagements, many are giving and more people are participating in the volunteer effort every day. MTA is fortunate to have so many willing volunteers. Thank you all very much. Your organization appreciates your efforts. Because you give so much and so few thank yous are said, Duke Jones, Chair of the annual Awards Committee championed an effort to expand the recognition process beyond one annual award. That is not to diminish the MTA annual award.
John Bollinger was the winner of that prestigious award this year. His contributions to the MTA and the field of technical analysis are long and legendary. John Murphy said it best when presenting the award at the recent annual seminar in New York city. My own thanks to John for pushing the MTA on completing the body of knowledge study. Without his eloquent emails, we might still be debating the process. Thank you John.
Brad Herndon received a service award for his efforts on the accreditation committee, the CMT exam process, the body of knowledge study and his service on the finance committee. Thank you, Brad. David Upshaw received a service award for his long term service to the accreditation committee. David has quietly given more of his time and his thoughtful comments to that committee than perhaps any other member. Thank you, David.
Tim Snavely received a service award for his efforts on the regions committee. Thanks in large part to Tim’s efforts our chapters have grown tremendously over the last year. His “regional initiative” accepted by the Board at their December 04 meeting has resulted in more speaking engagements supported by the MTA than ever before. Thank you, Tim.
Barry Sine received a service award for his efforts on the accreditation committee, the body of knowledge study, providing guidance to CMT candidates and the seminar committee. Everywhere I turned this year Barry seemed to be there willing to lend a hand. He also stepped into an unexpired term as secretary to the Board. Thank you, Barry.
If you have the opportunity, please extend your thanks to these outstanding contributors. Thank you.
Sincerely,
John R. Kirby
Executive Director
What's Inside...
New York, New York and Thank You.
by Jordan Kotick, CMTAnother May, another successful MTA conference in New York. It was a great experience to meet everyone and as always, interact on markets, ideas, personalities and whether the drum or the bass solo...
Introduction To Fusion Analysis
by John Palicka, CFA, CMTIntroduction “There is no free lunch”, so says the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). The overall track record of market participants who beat the market, whether by using mutual fund returns or...
Chapter View of National Meeting
by Clare White, CMTI just attended my first MTA annual conference and want to urge other chapter members to make it a point to get to (at least) one of these events. It was truly a great experience. I had an unusually...
Thank You
Mathematical Investment Decisions Inc. would like to thank the members and affiliates of the MTA who have taken advantage of our free offer of Financial Data Calculator. The product has truly...

In Memoriam
One of the worse tasks in assembling the monthly issues of Technically Speaking is an In Memoriam to an MTA member. This one is especially difficult as I knew and liked Frank. Never did I ever image...
The Market Pulse Indicator
by Frank E. Testa, CMTMarket Pulse Indicator Objective Often times, investors are led astray by the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and/or Nasdaq Composite Index, as...
3rd of the IIIrd Wave for the Profession of Technical Analysis : India Welcomes MTA
by Sushil Kedia“India has been waiting for the MTA,” I said to Mr. Jordan Kotick, President MTA when I recently met up with him in Mumbai. Why? Let me take the opportunity to explain India and its thorough...
Stock Master Shares His Secrets
by Matt Blackman, CMTIt is not often that traders get a crash course from a legend, but they had that opportunity recently. On May 14, 2005, more than 100 attendees gathered to hear the world record holding stock trader...
And, the winner is....
by John Murphy, CMTIt was a great honor being asked to present this year’s MTA Annual Award. As you know, this is the most prestigious award given each year by the Market Technicians Association. I first become aware...
Using the Float in Technical Analysis
by Steve WoodsTechnical analysis of stock behavior is currently created around three pieces of data: price, volume and time. There is, however, a fourth piece of data which can be incorporated into a stock chart...
MTA BUSINESS - Reflections on the MTA Seminar Software Vendor Panel Discussion
by Robert Colby, CMTBarry Sine, CFA, CMT, Co-Chair of the MTA seminar committee asked me to moderate a two-hour panel with four top TA software vendors as part of the MTA Education Seminar. The intention was to educate...
Another May, another successful MTA conference in New York. It was a great experience to meet everyone and as always, interact on markets, ideas, personalities and whether the drum or the bass solo was better at Birdland that Saturday night. Many thanks to not only everyone who attended, but everyone behind the scenes. On that note, a tip of the cap to Barry Sine who did a lot of work organizing, leading and steering the conference this year. As the summer hits, we have the postelection additions and subtractions from the MTA Board. While I will say more about the new additions in forthcoming letters, I wanted to say a most sincere thanks to two gentlemen who have served their term on the Board: Phil Roth and Mike Epstein. I am sure these names are not new to anyone in the MTA or, dare I say it, many technicians globally. Both
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Contributor(s)

Jordan Kotick, CMT
Bio Coming
Introduction “There is no free lunch”, so says the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH). The overall track record of market participants who beat the market, whether by using mutual fund returns or doing corporate mergers and acquisitions is not good. The vast majority of funds underperforms the indices, and acquiring companies (as compared to those being acquired) don’t have much to show for it. Getting risk-adjusted excess returns is not easy. The EMH in its Weak form casts doubt on technical analysis, and in its Semi-Strong form, it casts doubt on the use of fundamental research. Perhaps, only in the Strong form of the EMH can one outperform by using material inside information. However, that invites an orange jumpsuit at the local jail. Still, exceptions and doubts on the EMH are growing. In Technical Analysis, studies on certain common practices, such as the use of Moving Averages to create buy/sell decisions, seem to provide
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Contributor(s)

John Palicka, CFA, CMT
John Palicka, CFA, CMT, teaches finance and technical
I just attended my first MTA annual conference and want to urge other chapter members to make it a point to get to (at least) one of these events. It was truly a great experience. I had an unusually high travel schedule right before the conference and figured I’d just blend into the background to wind down my week. I had only met a couple of the attendees in person and was looking forward to putting “faces with names” for those I’ve been in contact with by e-mail. Absolutely everyone-and I mean everyone-was so welcoming and receptive to conversation. Any concerns of being an outsider were quickly alleviated. Additionally, the range of backgrounds for the attendees seemed extremely varied. Whether new to the association or established with a couple of widely used indicators under your belt, you had someone in which you could commiserate. It was great. Funny it’s a side note,
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Contributor(s)

Clare White, CMT
Clare White, who holds a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, is the President of InVelocity, LLC where she provides educational content for technical and options analysis for the US equities and options markets for her client, Optionetics, Inc. She also provides...
Mathematical Investment Decisions Inc. would like to thank the members and affiliates of the MTA who have taken advantage of our free offer of Financial Data Calculator. The product has truly benefited from the valuable input of professional technical analysts. This free offer (three years running) will expire on June 30, 2005. After June 30, MTA Members and Affiliates will still receive a 38 percent discount on purchases of Financial Data Calculator and FDC-Plus. That is, MTA persons may purchase FDC for $100 (instead of $160), and FDC-Plus for $160 (instead of $260). All owners of the software (whether promotional or paid) receive free upgrades for life!
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One of the worse tasks in assembling the monthly issues of Technically Speaking is an In Memoriam to an MTA member. This one is especially difficult as I knew and liked Frank. Never did I ever image that I would doing a tribute to him. I have asked a few of his friends to write something about him – and I also asked his wife to do the same. I never met Loes, but she is very brave to write such a personal tribute and send it to me (someone she never met) to publish in our newsletter. Our condolences to her and their two children. – BG I am writing this with great sadness to inform you of the passing away of our good friend and colleague Frank Vlug from the Netherlands at age 44, way too young. Many of you have known him as a very professional analyst and a
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Market Pulse Indicator Objective Often times, investors are led astray by the performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and/or Nasdaq Composite Index, as these “generals” will behave contrary to the underlying market (soldiers). In an attempt to gauge the true overall strength/weakness of the market, fine technical analysis work has been conducted leading to the development of the advance/decline ratio, McClellan Summation Index, and the ARMS Index. In an effort to fine tune the existing tools that are available to technicians, I have developed the Market Pulse Indicator (MPI). The MPI utilizes both price and volume into its calculation, however the key strength and pivotal difference separating it from the ARMS Index is the flexibility of the MPI Indicator. The determent of the numerator and denominator is based on whether the number of advancing issues outnumbers declining issues during the session. The result is an indicator
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Contributor(s)

Frank E. Testa, CMT
Frank E. Testa, CMT is the Chief Technical Analyst and Vice President at CapitalBridge and has more than 20 years of investment experience. He has developed the Power Point and Figure Charting Method that appeared in the 2005 edition of The Journal of Technical Analysis. Frank...
“India has been waiting for the MTA,” I said to Mr. Jordan Kotick, President MTA when I recently met up with him in Mumbai. Why? Let me take the opportunity to explain India and its thorough involvement with Technical Analysis of Financial Markets by repeating another observation that I had to submit to him, “The third of the third wave on a supercycle scale for technical analysis is awaiting to be triggered in India.” Please notice the analogous pictures found in the monthly charts of the DOW and the BSE Sensex, not present in the hard-disks of technical analysts alone in Mumbai, but a favourite long term trend idea of arguably the biggest and most successful value investor in Mumbai today. From pencil-drawn charts preserved on acid-free paper that may be at least 75 years old used by some brokers in Mumbai to the real-time tick charts displayed by the electronic
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Contributor(s)

Sushil Kedia
Sushil Kedia is responsible for Foreign Institutional Investors’ sales at Alchemy Share & Stock Brokers Pvt. Ltd in India. He can be reached at
It is not often that traders get a crash course from a legend, but they had that opportunity recently. On May 14, 2005, more than 100 attendees gathered to hear the world record holding stock trader speak at a conference in Los Angeles. They weren’t disappointed and listeners were kept on the edges of their seats for more than 7 hours as Daniel Zanger spun his magic. As an added bonus, they also got to hear a presentation by Stan Ehrlich on learning how to identify powerful commodity cycles and chart patterns and profit from them. Both men will also be speaking at the upcoming IFTA Conference in Vancouver, B.C. November 3-5, 2005 hosted by the Canadian Society of Technical Analysts (CSTA) (please see link below). Dan Zanger is the keynote speaker. Zanger first came to public attention when he was featured in a Fortune magazine article in December 2000 entitled, My
To view this content you must be an active member of the CMT Association.
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Contributor(s)

Matt Blackman, CMT
Matt Blackman is a technical trader, author, reviewer, keynote speaker and regular contributor to a number of trading publications including Stocks & Commodities, Active Trader, Trader Monthly, SFO mag and Traders Mag Europe as well as investment/trading websites in North...
It was a great honor being asked to present this year’s MTA Annual Award. As you know, this is the most prestigious award given each year by the Market Technicians Association. I first become aware of this year’s recipient in his role as the technical analysis for the Financial News Network many years ago. I was impressed with his daily discussions of the technical aspects of the market in front of the camera and often felt sorry for him having to do so on especially difficult market days. I once told him that I wouldn’t do his job for a million dollars. I actually wound up doing it later on CNBC for a lot less. My role as technical analyst for CNBC was actually a direct result of his work at FNN. CNBC felt that they needed a technical presence to compete with his FNN show Tech Talk. That started
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Not a member? Join the CMT Association and unlock access to hundreds of hours of written and video technical analysis content, including the Journal of Technical Analysis and the Video Archives. Learn more about Membership here.
Contributor(s)

John Murphy, CMT
John Murphy, Chief Technical Analyst at StockCharts.com and former technical analyst for CNBC, is author of several popular books including the best-selling Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets. His books on intermarket analysis created a new...
Technical analysis of stock behavior is currently created around three pieces of data: price, volume and time. There is, however, a fourth piece of data which can be incorporated into a stock chart that has been generally over-looked. That piece of data is the float. For those technicians unfamiliar with the term float, it is the number of shares actually available for trading. When a company comes public they issue shares outstanding. The company’s management retains some percentage of those shares and the remaining shares to be traded by the public is the floating supply or float. The origins of the terms, float and floating supply are unknown to me but I do know that one of the earliest attempts to incorporate the float technically into a price chart can be traced to famed trader W.D. Gann. In his book, Truth of the Stock Tape[1], he made two references to the
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Contributor(s)

Steve Woods
Steve Woods has been an MTA Affiliate for He is CEO of www.FloatCharts.com and
Barry Sine, CFA, CMT, Co-Chair of the MTA seminar committee asked me to moderate a two-hour panel with four top TA software vendors as part of the MTA Education Seminar. The intention was to educate MTA members about what is available, how the various alternatives compare, any unique capabilities, and costs. Also, three vendors set up and staffed full live data displays so we could a test drive their software, get answers to questions, and check the market during the three days of the conference. Four vendors each took 15 to 20 minutes to talk about their unique benefits, then we opened it up for audience Q&A. The vendors arrived at a consensus in advance to keep the panel friendly and non-confrontational. I felt that as moderator I should be unbiased and only speak in order to keep the discussion moving or ask a question when it might help clarify some point.
To view this content you must be an active member of the CMT Association.
Not a member? Join the CMT Association and unlock access to hundreds of hours of written and video technical analysis content, including the Journal of Technical Analysis and the Video Archives. Learn more about Membership here.
Contributor(s)

Robert Colby, CMT
Robert W. Colby, who holds a Chartered Market Technician (CMT) designation, is the Chairman and Founder of the Robert W. Colby Asset Management, Inc, a technical market analysis company. He also writes a daily newsletter, performs custom technical research for institutional...
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