Where and when did you start your career as a market analyst?
"I started in 1968 as a very junior technical analyst for the CIT Financial Corp. My job was just to chart the stocks that they had in their portfolio. At meetings we reviewed the charts, and every now and then, I would very carefully offer a comment or an observation."
And they took your advice?
"Oh, they usually ignored it. At any rate, I spent the first couple of years learning everything I could about technical analysis. I read every book I could find, even though there weren't a lot of books available at the time. I read the classics that were available, and I took one or two courses at the New York Institute of Finance (NYIF). Then in the early 1970s, the stock market really cooled off and went into a very bad period. I switched over, temporarily I thought, into commodities, which was red hot at the time.
Ultimately, I moved to Merrill Lynch to work in commodities. I was in charge of Merrill's commodity technical research in the early 1970s, and then in the late 1970s, I moved into managing money. I was very focused on the commodities and futures markets."
You've seen different technical approaches over your career. What do you think is important and what's not in using technical analysis?
"I've been very influenced over the years by the fact that since I'm working in television, by and large I am talking to a nontechnical audience. It has forced me to re-evaluate the way we present technical analysis and decide what I think is important. I've simplified my work. At one time or another, I'd dabbled or experimented with virtually every theory before getting to that point. I probably use some elements of everything that I have studied. But I've taken all of these approaches and simplified my analytical style as much as possible because sometimes we get so bogged down with all the fancy indicators and fancy theories that we ignore the obvious."
