STA Blog

Some weeks ago Paul McLaren came to the STA’s monthly meeting to talk to us about how he uses volume at price.  He kindly brought with him some question and answer sheets and a few text books he was hoping to offload.  Nudging our librarian I suggested we snap up a copy for our collection seeing as it is no longer available in hard copy.  He did, but forgot to get it signed!  There we go.

John Douce has kindly read the book on our behalf and sent me a summary of its contents with some of his own views.  I pass these on in order for you to decide whether you’d like to borrow it.  Remember, this can now be done on-line from the STA website (www.technicalanalysts.com).

Wiley, established in 1807, specialises in academic works including medical, scholarly, scientific ,and technical fields.  The Trading Guide, published in 2010, consists of the views of 17 Australian technical analysts (among them McLaren), fresh in their minds the great financial crisis of 2008 and, as a background, the Asian crisis of 1998.  Interestingly John, a long-standing MSTA, admits that much of the territory covered in the book was new to him.  It’s comprehensive and reminds us – something that regularly needs doing – of the very basics of our subject.

Broken down into chapters of easily digestible 20 pages apiece, two are written by women where Louise Bedford asks if ladies trade as well as blokes and whether it is down to the chemistry of the brain.  Five chaps cover planning and strategy for the individual, three a trader’s psychological makeup, and the rest more conventional general market and technical analysis ideas.

Chapter 1 is a hard-hitter by Alan Hull who looks at the Australian All Ordinaries Share Index (1983-2010) in great detail.  Roaming from Elliott Wave to Mandelbrot, Portfolio to Chaos Theory, it sounds as if he may have bitten off rather a lot.

Daryl Guppy, of CNBC TV fame has a slot, expanding on his ‘dividend hop’ and ‘Swiss roll’.  We are reminded that he lives 3000 kilometres from the nearest stock exchange.  Peter Pontikis compares markets while Jim Berg combines both technical and fundamental analysis.

Rounding out with ‘Lies my broker told me’ by Chris Tate, who has several books to his name, this reminds me of the quote by Woody Allen: ‘ A stock broker is one who invests other people’s money until it’s all gone.’

In John’s words: ‘This will be a splendid addition to our collection’.  Sounds good to me!