STA Blog

For those of you who couldn’t make the STA’s 30^th birthday party on the 30^th November – you missed a real treat.  Originally ACTA (the Association of Chart and Technical Analysts founded in 1968) Philip Gray, Fellow of the Society of Technical Analysts, incorporated it into the Society of Technical Analysts in 1986; unfortunately circumstances conspired so he couldn’t come.  Instead Robin Griffiths, another FSTA, addressed a capacity crowd and Jeremy du Plessis FSTA sat at top table with Chairman Axel Rudolf FSTA, Luise Kliem FSTA and Anne Whitby FSTA close by, as was Adam Sorab FSTA.

Dinner of smoked salmon or Julienne salad, then poached chicken or celeriac and leek pie (for veggies), rounded off with pistachio panacotta with homemade Baklava (in case you were wondering).  Axel spoke mercifully briefly afterwards, outlining this year’s achievements and plans for the coming one.  He then welcomed another deserving member into his gang – Karen Jones, currently STA Head of Marketing and a tireless promoter of the very highest standards in professional TA.  Having worked at large financial institutions in the City of London for longer than she might care to admit, she was visibly delighted by this honour.  Karen later said that she was ‘thrilled to be made an FSTA and very honoured’ .  She has certainly ‘greatly contributed to the field of technical analysis or to the development of the STA’, conditions for eligibility to FSTA-dom.

Robin then entertained us with anecdotes, of starting in the City with pukka stockbrokers Phillips & Drew years before the societies got going, how then TA was for witch doctors, and how life has moved on since then.  Advice on how to get the analysis right included, ‘wobble the ruler around a bit’ or ‘use a thicker pencil’.  Life in Japan and a Westerner’s introduction to candlestick charts and how perhaps Asian culture naturally lends itself to our subject.  He went on: ‘the International Federation of Technical Analysts began at a conference in Japan where it was debated whether there should be a body called IFTA; and if so, how would it get the money to keep going? I stood up at that conference and said yes there should be, and if there is to be one, Britain would host the conference to raise money for IFTA’.

STA members should have received their December 2016 newsletter by now.  Onwards and upwards, and as Robin said, ‘may your markets go with you!’