STA Blog

Such a pity I couldn’t make it to the STA’s September 2019 monthly meeting at One Moorgate Place; events beyond my control. A member of our society for many years, Tim Parker is a top-flight technical analyst with a very strong pedigree.

As editor of our Market Technician magazine, I knew he’d contributed to this month’s issue, so I consoled myself with reading that instead. He kicks off saying: ‘’No investment analyst has a monopoly on the best way to make money in the financial markets, but some make better use of analytical toolkits than others.’’ This reminded me of the vintage management book entitled ‘How to make Friends and Influence people’ – but where one substitutes ‘influence’ for ‘alienate’.

You see, Tim has flair in the way he thinks, works, acts and reacts, so while not deliberately trying to be unconventional, he can come across as so. Saying, ‘’technical analysis is moving from the objective to the subjective’’ is bound to ruffle feathers. But I understand where he’s coming from as I too see this form of analysis as not nearly as objective as some make it out to be.

He explains how ‘’the judgement of data-derived information is as important as the information itself’’, where the recognition of patterns and trends is a mix of instinct, experience and intuition. ‘’Judgement overlays calculation’’. He continues: ‘’I maintain that technical analysts rely on both internal and external factors in the market narrative and therefore need to be both subjective (like an artist) and objective (like a scientist), using TA to bridge the gap’’. I totally ‘get that’.