The MTA was very privileged to have Philip Erlanger, CMT as a presenter at January’s MidWinter Retreat. Brett Villaume, CMT, the MTA’s Atlanta Chapter Chair, was able to provide us with a synopsis of that presentation. Philip Erlanger, two-time past President of the MTA and renowned short-interest profiteer, revealed the details of his most recent work, “Trading Seasonality,” in a presentation given during the Mid-Winter Retreat. In his research, Phil emphasizes two mainstays of technical analysis with which I whole heartedly agree: prices are indicative of underlying influences which cannot be fully known and that a quantitative approach should be used to verify how effective an indicator works as a forecasting tool. In case you missed the presentation, here’s a recap. As an introduction, Phil stressed the idea that the presence of a strong seasonal pattern is only a “setup” condition – it is a necessary condition, but not sufficient evidence to

Marie Penza joined the MTA as a Bookkeeper and Administrative Assistant in November of 2003. She is now the Administrative Coordinator for the CMT Program and Membership Services. Marie assists candidates with the payment and scheduling of their exams and most importantly, helping them when they encounter problems when taking the CMT exam. Duties also include maintenance of the candidate’s records, posting their grades and monitoring their CMT Program deadlines. She also assists Brad Herndon, our Board Member, with the graders,  arranges their accommodations and the delivery and retrieval of the exams. Once the exams have been graded she is the one who reviews the CMT 3 Exams for accuracy of points awarded and prepares the statistic spreadsheet. Besides assisting Brad Herndon with the CMT exams, Marie also assists in the coordinating of the CMT 3 Papers. Membership duties include the maintenance of member records, monthly e-mailing and postal mailing of

Ralph J. Acampora, CMT, Managing Director and Director of Technical Research, Knight Equity Markets, L.P. Ralph J. Acampora is Knight’s Director of Technical Research. He joined Knight in 2005 after 15 years as Prudential Equity Group’s Director of Technical Analysis. Mr. Acampora is one of Wall Street’s most respected technical analysts and has been consistently ranked by Institutional Investor for more than 10 years. Prior to his employment at Prudential, Mr. Acampora worked from 1980 to 1990 at Kidder Peabody & Co. Before that, he was with Smith Barney, Harris, Upham & Co. from 1969 to 1980. His financial career began with Distributor’s Group, a mutual fund complex owned by US Life. He received his formal education at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York and St. Joseph’s Seminary in Yonkers, New York. He is the author of the book “The Fourth Mega Market: Now Through 2011” published by Hyperion in