STA Blog

Last year, instigated by the Board of the STA with Chair Eddie Tofpik a keen proponent of the idea, the concept of a day in which to recognise the profession of technical analyst was registered with the authority overseeing these things. This year the idea has been adopted by IFTA and all the societies affiliated with this global umbrella organisation.

The date chosen was the ninth of September, all to do with Gann. It is 9/9, or the square of nine, a strong concept in the thinking of the famous W. D. Gann.

To coincide with this Saturday’s date STA board member Gerry Celaya interviewed Eddie to find out more about the idea and what he hopes to achieve. You can listen to the podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0fL1MEymrCvvyNSopmIHs0

For me, my mentor and guru was David Fuller FSTA. Do put his name into the search box of the STA website www.technicalanalysts.com for more info and you can read his obituary in Market Technician magazine.

In 1982 I started at the international division of a small bank in the City of London. My two lovely bosses had determined that I was to be the bank’s technical analyst and were more than happy to sign me up to as many courses, buy me books, and go the whole hog to get me up to speed with traders who knew the subject. Trips to visit the offices and pits of commodity traders in New York and Chicago, stints as an assistant on the foreign exchange desk, with the money market guys and gilt market makers in their booth of the London Stock Exchange. Such fun!

But the best was a two-day course, a big event at Le Meridien on Piccadilly I think, presented by David Fuller. He launched The Chart Seminar in 1970, an annual event held all over the world in a career spanning something like 50 years. The man steps onto the podium in this very large hall and has me and most of the audience utterly enthralled. Such verve, brilliant delivery, poise, panache and, to put it bluntly, style. Command of the subject is a given, but the way he explained things was so clever. He made all the things I had been learning click into one coherent picture. It was like dancing, not with two left feet, but the most brilliant of partners. He is sadly missed.