Episode 6: Ralph Acampora, CMT

The Godfather of Technical Analysis, Ralph Acampora, CMT joins Fill the Gap for a conversation about the history of markets, and market technicians. As the co-founder of the “MTA” in the late 1960s, Ralph’s passion for the discipline of technical market analysis has not waned a bit in his 50-year career on Wall Street.

Discussing long-term secular market trends and periods of extended market expansion, Ralph shares that we may be in a fifth “Mega Market” cycle. Comparing historical periods of great economic expansion, Ralph coined the term to describe post-war market rallies in his book “The Fourth Mega Market” which he penned in the 1990s.  As the world slowly begins to emerge from the COVID pandemic, the massive injection of funding for research to fight the virus will likely be commercialized in the period ahead, helping extend a global bull market over the coming years. 

Ralph opens up about his lifelong passion for historical study, his experience computing indicators and plotting charts by hand in the windowless “War Rooms” of the 1960s and 70s, and gaining direct advice from veteran technical analysts such as Ralph Rotnem and Ken Ward in his early career. These were the giants upon whose shoulders the technical community was built. Ralph references his personal Chart Museum, as well as other moments when the CMT Association library played a key role in expanding global finance knowledge.

Ralph’s riveting stories about his accidental start in finance, as well as the contributions he’s made to the discipline of technical analysis over the last five decades, provide critical insight and context for market technicians operating in today’s digital-first environment. To better understand the concepts he references, we recommend you review the supplemental resources accompanying this episode using this link: go.cmtassociation.org/ftge6

Fill the Gap, hosted by David Lundgren, CMT, CFA and Tyler Wood, CMT brings veteran market analysts and money managers onto a monthly podcast.

For complete show notes of every episode, visit: https://cmtassociation.org/development/podcasts/

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CMT Association is the global credentialing authority committed to advancing the discipline of technical analysis in the financial services industry. We serve members in over 137 countries. Our mission is to elevate investors mastery and skill in mitigating market risk and maximizing return in capital markets through a rigorous credentialing process, professional ethics, and continuous education. CMT Association formed in the late 1960s with headquarters in lower Manhattan, NY and Mumbai, India.

Learn more at: www.cmtassociation.org

Transcript

Resources

Ralph’s full CMT presenter biography

The Fourth Mega-Market book by Ralph Acampora

The Dow Theory book by Robert Rhea

Ralph Acampora & Alan Shaw on RealVision, live at the CMT Association 2019 Symposium

Louis Rukeyser’s Dec. 1991 PBS show episode featuring Ralph: “New Years Special” Part 1 and Part 2

Wall Street Journal article on Ralph’s barn and chart museum (paywall)

Brought to you with support from Optuma

Transcript

Tyler Wood  00:13

Welcome to Fill the Gap, the official podcast series of the CMT Association hosted by David Lundgren and Tyler Wood. This monthly podcast will bring veteran market analysts and money managers into conversations that will explore the interviewees’ investment philosophy, their process and decision making tools. By learning more about their key mentors, early influences, and their long careers in financial services, Fill the Gap will highlight lessons our guests have learned over many decades and multiple market cycles. Join us in conversation with the men and women of Wall Street, who discovered, engineered, and refined the design of Technical Market Analysis.

Tyler Wood  01:11

Fill the Gap is brought to you with support from Optuma, a professional charting and data analytics platform. Whether you are a professional analyst, portfolio manager or trader, Optuma provides advanced technical and quantitative software to help you discover financial opportunities. Candidates in the CMT program gain free access to these powerful tools during the course of their study. Learn more at Optuma.com.

Tyler Wood  01:51

Good afternoon, Dave Lundgren and welcome to Fill the Gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association. How are you doing this afternoon?

Dave Lundgren  01:59

Excellent. Tyler. Great to see you again. As always.

Tyler Wood  02:02

As always, and what a treat this episode has been with none other than the godfather of technical analysis, Mr. Ralph Acampora, CMT. Tell me, Dave, what was your favorite part of this interview with Ralph?

Dave Lundgren  02:16

It’s funny, one of the big upsides for me in doing this series has been rediscovering some of the books that some of our guests have written over the years. And you know, I’d read them when they came out. There’s so many books out there, you just forget them after you read them. And in preparation for each of these discussions, I’ve gone back and reviewed the books and it was the case with Louise’s book, and Walter Deemer’s books, plural. But with Ralph’s book, which he wrote in the 90s, called Mega Markets, obviously, he talked about the bull market that was going on, which again, was in the late 90s. But the real value of that book was the in-depth analysis he did of the preceding three mega markets, and what the commonalities were amongst those three markets. And what he found after a great deal of work was that it’s low inflation and low interest rates, peacetime, and some sort of technological revolution, which is often spawned off from the preceding war when the government spends, you know, some massive percentage of GDP in order to win that war. And in so doing, that advanced technology to a point where it helps them win that war. But then after during peacetime, they actually commercialize that technology that ends up being a very big driver of the impending mega market. And of course, he identified the 90s as being one of those environments then. And what I found really interesting was, in his summary comments about the markets today, that although we didn’t go to war with a country we did on a global scale, we did go to war with a disease, a pandemic. And of course, the governments around the globe spent very large percentages of their GDP to win that war, spent a lot of money on technology. And now we have as the economies normalizing, reopening, we’re going back to the quote, unquote “peacetime,” low interest rates, low inflation, hopefully that remains the case. But then this technology works its way into the economy. And when you look at the charts, as a technician, you always want to try to have these understandings of what’s happening from the macro perspective, but then look at the charts, man, it sure does look like it could be pretty explosive, Molotov cocktail, even though it’s in peacetime.

Tyler Wood  04:15

A fifth mega market, so to speak. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I went down the rabbit hole the other night looking into genomics research and the newer field of proteomics studying proteins, which is all the basis of the mRNA vaccines, and it’s gonna be fascinating to watch how that plays out. But certainly, you know, for Ralph, history is so important, and I think for the entire technical community, providing context to their firms and their clients, understanding the story that the charts are telling us but also paying attention to how, as Mark Twain said, history often rhymes, even when it doesn’t repeat. And I think Ralph provides that to us, I think in a couple of ways, the history of the markets. He is truly passionate about understanding where we’ve come from and the effects of not just market participants but also presidents and world leaders and macroeconomic forces. But he’s also a real historian of the CMT Association and the Market Technicians Association, right. I think it was only fitting that the co-founder of the organization, young, 20 year old Ralph and his buddy, Johnny Brooks, you know, pounding the pavement on Wall Street deciding that technical analysts deserved their fair shake and needed a place to gather and share ideas. I mean, that’s really the basis why any of us are here and how far we have come.

Dave Lundgren  05:37

That’s the key takeaway for the CMT Association to recall, and you know, we talk about Louise Yamada and Walter Deemer. And Bob Farrell, and all the legends of the business and how much of a key role they played in the CMT Association. But if you want to reduce it down to brass tacks, these are the two gentlemen who actually founded the organization. Correct. That’s really where it started. Those are the seeds. Yeah.

Tyler Wood  06:00

It’s incredible that 50 years later, right, our organization got started in the late 60s. So we’re actually beyond the 50 year mark. Ralph continues to contribute in so many ways. I joined the organization 10 years ago, and it was Ralph and his infectious enthusiasm for the, you know, his passion for technical analysis that it’s so convincing. How could you not want to investigate more and learn more when you spend any time with Ralph and obviously, other guests have said the exact same thing. Louise Yamada got into the business and started to learn technical analysis. But taking Ralph and Alan’s course, at the New York Institute of Finance, and Frank Teixeira, Episode Five, he talks about, you know, Ralph being the hook and why he became so passionate about understanding this side of the business. So it’s worth noting that Ralph taught at the New York Institute of Finance for well over 40 years, and he’s way too humble to mention his class roster. But I think for everybody out there, if you look at the titans of the street, anybody with a technical perspective, you can probably trace that right back to Ralph’s classes at the New York Institute of Finance. And certainly he continues today, his legacy to the industry, both in terms of education, teaches at St. Thomas University in Minnesota, and Ralph himself is larger than life, but so are his charts. Yeah, have you booked your ticket to Minnesota to go see Ralph’s farm?

Dave Lundgren  07:21

I have not yet but it’s definitely on the calendar at some point this summer, because it’s something I definitely want to see. What we’re talking about here is a large barn in Minnesota that’s on Ralph’s property that he painted the history of the Dow on the side of the barn, and it goes around more than one side, correct?

Tyler Wood  07:38

Correct. Multiple sides go back through the Cowles index. And Ralph’s actually continuing to curate a museum of financial history, both his own career 50 years on Wall Street and some incredible items from the New York Stock Exchange, as well as a real deep dive into the history of markets. Going back to the Civil War. We’re all on bated breath on the edge of our seats waiting for Ralph’s next book about the history of financial markets. And certainly for all of you listening, hopefully, you have a chance to meet Ralph in person. He’s a frequent guest at conferences and seminars around the world speaks to students all the time. And he is just as vibrant today as he was probably in the first few days on the streets of Wall Street, just pushing the the passion for technical analysis.

Dave Lundgren  08:26

Yeah. It was an honor to interview him. Absolutely.

Tyler Wood  08:30

So with that, we hope you enjoy Episode Six, with Ralph Acampora, CMT.

Dave Lundgren  08:40

Welcome to the sixth episode of Fill the Gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association, our guest this month is none other than the legendary Ralph Acampora. Ralph, welcome to the Fill the Gap.

Ralph Acampora  08:53

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Dave Lundgren  08:55

It’s a real pleasure to have you with us. You’re so generous with your time. I’ve – in preparation for today’s discussion. You know, I’ve listened to a lot of the interviews you’ve given over the years, and you’ve just been super generous, of course, with your time in that regard, as well as all that you’ve given to the technical community, the investment community, you’ve been a real stalwart for all of us, as you like to say, giants standing upon the shoulders of giants hope your shoulders aren’t getting too tired. We still need you.

Ralph Acampora  09:19

Now, that was that was a phrase that Allan Schore coined many years ago, when we started the association in 1969, 1970. And he was talking about the generation of technicians before him. Maybe later we’ll talk about how frighten them and all the others. They were giants, they really were in their own field. There was no question.

Dave Lundgren  09:41

So why don’t we get started with just a discussion of how you got actually into the business but also in particular, how you found your way to technical analysis. Tell us a little bit about that before we get really started into the later years.

Ralph Acampora  09:54

You really want my story? Because I really did. Yeah, well, it started out as an automobile accident. I was in the seminary, turning for the priesthood in the 1960s. And I went home on Mother’s Day to visit mom, of course my father hands me the keys, to his brand new car. It was three days old, God forbid I put a scratch on it. Well, I was quite – I was stopped at a stop sign in a trailer truck. 40 tons at 60 miles an hour wakes me up.

Dave Lundgren  10:23

Oh my goodness.

Ralph Acampora  10:24

I wound up in the hospital. They did spinal fusion and three months in the hospital bed with a body cast that had me hanging by wire from the ceiling, no air conditioning in the hospitals and home state and my father, his very good friend, Bill Downey, who got me the fabulous surgeon, Dr. Frederick Thompson. He was the back surgeon. I’m very proud to say I had the Thompson bone in my back and Mr. Downey every day would come to the hospital. And because he lived nearby and one day I said to him this day, I said, I’m not going back to school in September and he said, What are you going to do with your life? I said, I don’t know. I could be a school teacher, social worker. I said, but I enjoy reading this stuff every day he would throw the Wall Street Journal in the bed. And that was my first exposure to Wall Street. Fantastic. And said, Oh, I can get your job. He knew everybody. This guy was unbelievable. He takes me to the director of research at Smith Barney, which was the booth research boutique in those days. And the director of research looks at my resume says Oh, a different priests. I said no, quite good. I see perhaps around the head, if you go home, get an MBA, come back. I’d give you a job. Well, I would want to go to school. I want to go out and live it up. I saw a new Wall Street Journal, a little ad said Junior analysts wanted, no experience necessary. So that’s my job. I was still on crutches and went over to this guy. I think he was afraid I was going to hit him over the head with one crutch. Oh, stop, stop. I say I said, I wash windows do floors, I’ll do everything. He hands me a book, said you read this book and come in Monday. The book was Edwin McGee’s book, Technical, and that changed my life, survival. And I started. Yeah. And then I went to the New York Institute of Finance to classes. That’s where I met Alan Shaw, who was the teacher at the time of the basic class. And he hired me from class. That’s how it started by accident.

Dave Lundgren  12:19

So you didn’t have any, I guess, fundamental indoctrination into the business that you had to overcome. You just kind of went right into the technicals just by sheer happenstance and the circumstances of your life.

Ralph Acampora  12:28

Yes, preceding the job that – that job that I got was with a mutual fund. And those days were very, I don’t think there were very many mutual funds. And the man that started that company was Harold E. Schroeder, who was a former economic adviser to President and Eisenhower. And I asked Mr. Schroeder one day I said that because there was no important figure choice I had, I was responsible for all their libraries, their chart libraries. And I said to him one day I said, Mr. Schroeder, why am I spending my entire life putting little X’s on a piece of paper? He said, Did you ever feed chickens? I looked at him. I said, No. And then I said, no wonder Eisenhower had problems, if this was his advice to chickens. I said, No, sir. I said, I’m from the Bronx. Muggers, we have. Chickens, we don’t have. He said, young man, here’s how you feed chickens. You take your chicken feed your right hand, you throw it over your left shoulders and the birds went to the left. I said, Okay. You take chicken feed in your left hand, you throw it over your right shoulder and they run the other way. I said, Okay. So now after you do that, he said, look down on the ground. What do you see? He said little X’s. He said, Now you know where the birds are going. I thought that was most profound thing I ever heard. I’m pointing fingers.

Dave Lundgren  13:38

Like I said, I’ve listened to a lot of your interviews. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard you share that story. So I feel fortunate that you shared it here on this podcast.

Ralph Acampora  13:46

That’s a great start. Yeah, he was a wonderful, wonderful man. We became lifetime friends. Oh, yes.

Dave Lundgren  13:51

Yeah. And so of course, your first boss was Alan Shah.

Ralph Acampora  13:56

No, it was Harold; Harold was my first boss, I worked for a couple of years with him. And then, in fact, Harold sent me to the New York Institute of Finance, because I had no financial background at all. You know, I was a history major in college. I didn’t, I didn’t know anything about PE multiples in itself. And that was one of the classes, later I was taking Alan’s class. And Alan asked the students, can anyone do a point figure chart? And I said, I raised my hand and went up to the board. And I started doing one point reversals, and then I did three point reversals.

Dave Lundgren  14:27

When I think about points – So yeah, it’s like when I had my first job, I guess in charting was 1990. I feel like I was right at the cusp of when we no longer did charts by hand, but I did actually maintain a chart by hand. It was the bond futures contract, and it was using point and figure method. And so it was fast forward to today. And I don’t think there’s anybody perhaps certainly in the younger generation that, that maintains a chart by hand. And so one of the questions I was going to ask you is do you – having done it for so long yourself? Do you feel like technical analysis has changed as a result of us no longer having to do it by hand? In other words, we used to refer to technical analysis as being an art. Do you think you’ve lost some of the art aspect?

Ralph Acampora  15:07

One of the reasons why the organization started was Johnny Brooks and I will talk about Johnny in a few minutes. Johnny and I were accused of being, ah, you guys, you’re just charters who play with paper all day. And that’s, that’s what bothered us, because it’s fundamental guys are too arrogant. And they thought that just playing with paper, you guys know, you can’t do anything with the stock market. I gotta say it. I missed it. For one very important reason. Doing the chart, guess what? You get a feel? Yeah, exactly. You think? Oh, yes. And so I tried to maintain that without doing the charts thing. You know, what I have, I have a spreadsheet, it’s attached to my Thompson Reuters quote, “machine,” I have a spreadsheet of, you know, maybe ETF and all the stocks and indexes and everything on there. And I put – not the machine, I put the support and resistance levels in and it monitors for them. So whenever anything moves during the day, it lights up, red, if this is breaking down; green, if it’s breaking out, and I know everything that moves, I kind of still have that feel. I try to capture that feel.

Dave Lundgren  16:14

So you just try to get in the charts as opposed to just look at them, right?

Ralph Acampora  16:18

Yes. And but – what happens at the end of the day, or during the day, I know what, what’s going on, because my spreadsheet’s telling me where the action is, right where important technical action is. Because I thought that by the way, I identify the trends. And it’s broken trend, it’ll flash to me major or minor support, major or minor resistance and trends pop out for me. And then I have it where you get a golden cross, a dead cross, it’ll flash that. So I like the dynamism. I like to update it. That’s from the original process that I did for many, many years. Right.

Dave Lundgren  16:45

So you’ve retained the old process, but you’ve just leveraged technology to the extent that you – it just makes more efficient for you. Yeah. So when you had your first job as a technician was 1977 67. Absolutely, yeah, that’s an interesting perspective. So you get in right at the end of one of the great secular bull runs, and then you spent the whole, you know, many, of course, 15 or so years in a secular bear market.

Ralph Acampora  17:19

Funny, you should bring that up. Because for the first 10 years to me, in a business, whether it was with the mutual fund or with Alan, hearing the old timers grumbling all the time, bah, this market, you get a good run for about six months, and then it goes into retreat. And we traded between 500 and 1000. It hit 1000. Across 1000. for like two days, I think it was 1971 or two, something like that, maybe in 73. And then it just stayed there until the 80s when it really started to take off.

Dave Lundgren  17:23

So – when it did start to take off. I’m curious, either if you yourself or if you noted amongst other investors, there was a difficulty or a reticence to actually embrace the bull market because of the repeated lesson. I learned. I gotta say,

Ralph Acampora  18:05

I have to say that Alan Shaw – and I’m not just saying it, because he’s an old friend of mine – he was right on, you know, he nailed the top just before the Arab oil crisis came in 73, 74 and was a double bottom. And 74, early 75. It was just perfect. And when it broke out at that massive double bottom in the early 1975, I believe I’m pretty sure it was – he was, we were right, right on target, I have to say an interesting story. That top in the early 70s 72, 73. It was huge on the chart, on the chart you had, and you had the Nifty 50 stocks in those days, IBM, Controlled Data, Murrow’s and Avon products and makes it some names that I’d never heard before I would cost to my point for your choice. And then when we had the MTA meetings, we’d sit down and be talking and I’d say hey, gee, you know, these charts were pretty choppy and and then then the big debate came up the guys that followed on-balance volume, OBV, sure kept saying, Oh, he had no worries, because I started to see the breakouts that were huge breakdown. It’s just No no, it’s light volume and that doesn’t mean anything. You got to have volume but no, it was the volume guys and the price guys staring at each other at these meetings. And I went back to Alan I said, Alan, I’m having debates with these guys and they just tell me you know, go away the point where he turned to me, he said, remember one thing, young man, bear markets start on light volume. The end of every volume. Those those are words that I’ve never forgotten. It helped me over five decades that I’ve been in the business. Yeah, those – that, those are the shoulders of giants. So that was standing on.

Tyler Wood  19:49

You know, Ralph, when I first came to the Market Technicians Association and got to find out what technical analysis was. We had a conference room that included a full decade of your chart. I believe that was the Dow Jones Average and there was a three ring notebook, probably about as heavy as my daughter is now, it must have been 600 pages 40 by 40 inch binder, Ralph’s first computer, and it was the database of all the prices closing closing prices.

Ralph Acampora  20:21

Yeah, that was my time. Yes. And in hand, it’s handwritten, every day, whatever the high, low close for the averages were. And they had to calculate the 20 day moving average. Think about it, we get up in the morning. First of all, I had to go to Morgan, Rogers and Robert to get the point and figure reversals at eight o’clock in the morning, come back to the office, start doing that, then do all the indicators, having to go all through the newspapers and Barron’s to find the levels that we need it and calculate it. And then by the time you did all of that collected data, you calculate the data, you plotted the data, the morning was gone. And it wasn’t until I’d say after lunch, when we all sat around, start looking at what we plotted and started questioning. Thanks. Yep. young generation has no idea what we went through. Right?

Tyler Wood  21:12

I think it’s so helpful for our listeners, for anybody who doesn’t understand or appreciate that history, to think about technical analysts of the 60s as kind of the first big data analytics departments where there was a lot of computation. Certainly not starting from, oh, this picture looks like this picture, but rather just a lot of heavy computation. And Ralph, could you share with us what happened to your charts, those full walls from the war room? Fascinating. Yes.

Ralph Acampora  21:38

Well, the chart you’re talking about was is eight feet high. 22 feet long. I have that one in my mind, and you guys got to come out. Tyler, you were there. Inside my barn. I have a Ralph museum, and I have all sorts of memorabilia from Wall Street. In fact, thank you very much. Again, I think you gave me the last big banner of the Market Technicians Association, just before we changed our name to the CMT Association. So I called Kyle, I said, I want that banner, and thank God he sent it to me. So it’s, it’s safe. It’s all there. And I was at Kidder Peabody when I left Allen’s – I started with Allen 1969. I went to Kidder Peabody in 1971. You want to hear a wonderful story, Kidder Peabody, and you got to remember, there weren’t that many technicians in those days. And Kidder Peabody was a wonderful white collar, shoe firm. And it was very old firm, very Bostonian, firm, and they had a big office in New York, they never had a technician. They decided one day to have a technician. The way I hear it is they went to Bob Farrell, at Merrill Lynch. And Farrell said, I don’t want the job. And then went to Alan, apparently, and he didn’t want the job. And what’s the next generation? And they all said, Ralph, they came to me and they made an offer I couldn’t refuse. And I went into Alan’s office. I said, Alan, I said, I want to take you to lunch. He looked at me, I could see the big question mark, and I say, I can hear him under his breath, say, this guy never takes me out to lunch towards to get and we chat down. We went into one restaurant, Alan says, I don’t wanna go here. And then we went to another why’s it not only go he didn’t want to sit down because he knew something was coming. And we finally found it restaurant. And it’s a beautiful story. I said to him, Alan, I was made an offer. And I think it’s my time. And he looked at me, he said, when a tear in his eyes, he said, but you don’t have a chart room. You don’t have charts. And I looked at him, I had dropped my head. It’s just to say, yeah, you know, you said, You go up in the office, fax everything, and take it and reproduce it. Wow, the guy gave me when I went into Kidder Peabody. I had all this stuff that they had family and friends helping me make charts and everything. And I walked in, I had gold in my hand, that firm had absolutely no idea what I had my hands when I walked in. And the room was, in fact, it was a converted vault, a bank vault that I had, and they had no windows. It was beautiful. The big room. In fact, it was the head of Director of Research, a nice man. He said to me, you’re the only analyst I know of that doesn’t want windows, fundamental analysts, like look out the windows. I said, I don’t want a window. He said he walked me into this. He said, it’s too expensive to remove the vault. I said, All I want you to do on this for me is to caulk the walls and curved the corners. They did that. And so my charts curved all the way around. And that chart that you’re talking about, Tyler, 18 high, 22 feet long, I had four of them. So you can imagine how big the room was. And in the middle of it. I had a big table. We all have a set around this table, middle of the table was a carousel that can move around on it with all the books holding our library. So you can just pull the books and talk on the phone and do whatever.

Ralph Acampora  23:22

And there’s a major American institution helping to preserve some of that history now, isn’t there Ralph?

Ralph Acampora  25:01

Rosemary and I moved from New York to Minnesota. It was 12, 13 years ago. I went up into the attic of course looking for you know moving furniture or furniture, whatever we’re going to move and I found these boxes and opened in like 20 years in it with my my charts, and I had presence of mind years ago to laminate them so they were in perfect condition. So I called Phil Roth and a few of my buddies on Wall Street. I said, guess what? The war room is alive. I have it. And Phil, I believe it Phil Roth, said to me, Ralph, he had that one wall shot with the three Dow Averages: the Dow Industrials, the Dow Transports and the Dow Utility with all the moving averages and events and all that sort of stuff on all he had done. I said yes. He said, Well, you got to bring it down to the finance museum and Wall Street. They’re doing a I think 100 and 60th birthday of Charles Dow or something like that, too. And they all said and I agree that would be a perfect backdrop for the exhibit. So I take it down to the to the museum. I’m rolling it down, rolling the chart out on the floor, and I could show this lady and she says Can I cut it? I said, I’ll tell you you can’t cut my chart. walking out the door. She says, no no Mr. Acapmora, no, no, don’t go. She says, we will make a cork wall and we’ll fasten it up, and that was the exhibit for the museum. And six months later, she calls me up, she says Mr. Acampora. She said the exhibit is closing down on a week. And she said this is one of the most unique possessions we have in our collection. Would you donate it? I said absolutely. And then then she tells me that that little library is part of the Smithsonian Institute. If you know anything about the Smithsonian Institute, that’s the nation’s attic. That’s the national library. So we have a chart hanging somewhere in the United States. And I hope they didn’t cut it.

Dave Lundgren  26:53

It’s pretty clear by now for all of our listeners that you have a lot of stories and you’ve been very generous sharing them over the years. Can you take a moment and tell us the fascinating story about your role in bringing candlesticks to the United States?

Ralph Acampora  27:08

Oh, wow. So you know that story? How do – you ready for this? I went to Japan for the first time. You ready for the date, December 7 1981 was the 40th anniversary of pearl harbor. I get off the plane. And my firm didn’t tell me about bringing extra cords and didn’t tell me about bowing and taking my shoes off. And I made all the mistakes the ugly American can make. But they were so nice to me, because over the years prior to going there in the 70s, while working for Alan Smith, Barney, guess what, we had a lot of interactions with the Japanese and I believe it was in 1973 that the Japanese government finally allowed their insurance companies to buy US equities. They’re only going to buy the Big Blue Chips. And you know that, but that was their adventure at first time. And with them coming to our office. And they were fascinated by our chart room. And they know there were clients I didn’t know. But over the years, they were friends, you know, friendly clients and they always came and they loved the chart. So when I went back on that anniversary for the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, a lot of the people that I met, were the people, same people that I talked to and met in our war rooms, Allen’s war room and then my world war room at Kidder Peabody, it was a very, very nice meeting and all and typical of the Japanese, they’re so gracious and everything and they bow and on leaving the last meeting leaving, they had their technicians out there. And one of the technicians gave me this book. I looked at it quickly. And of course, I thanked him. Ever in the book you put in a sleeve and you pull it out of its sleeve, it does fit into a little case. So I get on the aeroplane I’m looking at it and I’m pulling all the Japanese read from left to right, not right to left. So I had to pull it out the opposite way turn it around. Because it was all in Japanese. I couldn’t read it. I said, Oh, this is a very nice gift. I’m not gonna deal with it, I said. Well, the MTA library at the time was about six, seven years old. I started the library in 1975. And here is making 81. So I figured well, best thing to do is put the book in the library. Well, unbeknownst to me, several years later, a young analyst from Merrill Lynch, goes into the library. He was an MTA member, why not? His name was Steve Nison and apparently took the book. He was fascinated by it, how to translate it. And he did that; he brought candlesticks in the United States, it was my book. Yeah.

Dave Lundgren  29:41

I think that is just incredible.

Ralph Acampora  29:43

I hope we still have – I hope we still have the book in the library. I guess.

Dave Lundgren  29:47

I would, I would think so. But that’s just a fascinating story. I envision that Steve got on a plane and went and studied candlesticks in Japan or something, but it turns out no, it was Ralph’s book.

Ralph Acampora  29:56

Yeah. To tell him that; I think I have to tell him that. Yeah.

Dave Lundgren  30:04

We’ll leave that up to you. So yeah, you’ve done a lot of interviews and that there are so many things we can talk about one of your great contributions – and there truly are many – is actually your book, The Fourth Mega Market. And the amount of time you must have spent putting that book together, I can’t even attempt to estimate it. But the end contribution is just incredible, in terms of the essence of the book, forgive me if I don’t do it justice here, but just quickly is, is that you went back and you studied the prior mega bull markets, you coined the phrase mega mega bull markets, and you look for the commonalities. The amount of research that you put into this book can’t be overstated. So I wonder if you can tell us some of the high level conclusions that you found as it relates to these mega bull markets? And then maybe you can bring us up to speed today? Where are we today, in light of what you learned from the past.

Ralph Acampora  30:50

Let me give you a little history of what that – what that’s about. In 1995, beginning of the year, we started to have a very strong rising market. And anyone who follows technical knew that we were overbought. And I said how many points we went up, and what percentage is that, we didn’t have a meaningful correction, and it kept pushing higher and higher. And all of us on the street were saying, well, it’s gonna cause you know, consolidate, rotate, you know, all that good stuff. And it wasn’t doing that. And I remember one of the old time technicians that helped us start the organization, Ken Ward of Hayden Stone when I first met him at an MTA meeting, Ken when I met him in 1970 Ken had to be, I think it was 75 or 80 years old. And he, oh, it was like me sitting next to Mickey Mantle. You know who Mickey Mantle is? Yes. I was so excited to be next door. This meeting is going on he and I, in fact, Johnny Brooks, the three of us are talking to each other. And we’ve already been paying attention to the speaker and I leaned over to Mr. Ward, I said, Mr. Ward, what was the most difficult market? Now you can remember, this is 1970s. The guy is, I think 80 years old. So he lived most of the bull and bear markets in the 20th century up until that evening and wrote about it. So I asked myself, what was the most difficult market you ever had to write about, Mr. Ward? And I said ah, that’s a stupid question has to be the crash of 29. With a gravelly voice the man said, no, young man, that wasn’t the toughest market. The toughest market was the early 60s, I said but it went up! He said it did. And all of us kept saying it can’t go any higher. It’s got to consolidate got to consolidate. Never did, we were wrong. I never forgot that. And here we are in 1995. And I went back and I read every Wall Street Journal every day, most days had a coffee, go through the dirt, the dust. And the New York Public library, it took me a month to read all those papers. Today you can just go online, you get on your phone. And I read every wall street journal every day for six years. That was the beginning of Dow 7000, my famous report when it hits 7000. I was wrong. I thought it would take three years it only did two years. So 1997 hits 7000. And then I raised it to 10,000. I caught the hole. Everybody wanted to know what were we thinking? Because we didn’t call it the dot com bubble in those days. But it was, you know, it was part of the whole thing.

Ralph Acampora  33:21

Yeah, so the firm, the firm said to me, anyway, very supportive of this kid, it’s gonna go we’re gonna go up with 10,000, we hit 10,000. They want me to write the book. They got me in contract, they got me the book. They got me the publisher and everything. And so when I sat down, I said, What in the past have we gone through that was similar to this. And I call it a mega market, because it was huge, huge in the sense that it took years. And of course, it wasn’t straight up. You had many bear markets in between, but from bottom to top, there were major moves. And going back after the Civil War, the only average that was available at the time was because the average was a railroad average. And then I found the Cowles index, which by the way, the Cowles index becomes the s&p 500 in 1957. I put it in the book after the Civil War, we had what was called the Gilded Age, people were so excited that the war ended, they wanted to go out and you know, and have fun and new inventions. That was the first Industrial Revolution was coming about. And the market just went up dramatically for years. And then the second major event and I kept looking at the wars as major events and it was the end of the First World War and in 1918, 21 started the 21 to 29. The Dow went up 400% people were so excited. It was the roaring 20s they call it the Jazz Age and people want to you know, have fun and there was prohibition but you know, not everybody knows that was speakeasies, and people were having drinks on the side. I’m at a good time and Ford comes out with his model A car and everybody heard about the car, it was great. And then after the Second World War, the same thing again, the war ends, 1950s 60s, early 60s, you had a huge run. And that was a lot of the money that was spent in the war by the government was poured into the society into everybody’s daily life for me. And what we’re doing today, I call you the what we’re going through right now is the COVID War. We’re losing, unfortunately, maybe family members are passing away and neighbors and friends and everybody arguing whether we should wear a mask and we’re unhappy. But the strength in the market recently, in the last year and a half, is saying to me that, you know, once this is over, and the market opens, looks out three to six months, it’s so down the road, this light again to become this lens, that people are going to go travel, they’re going to go to restaurants, they’re going to spend money, they’re going to have a good time. And that’s why I think today, I had a point of phrase, and maybe it’s the fifth mega market, you know, that we’re in? It has a lot to do with the period of time, we’ll look at what the current administration is doing. They’re pouring money into the society. I mean, they’re just making trillions of dollars. But yeah, we’re gonna have a problem with inflation at some point. But I don’t think – I’m not an economist. But I think inflation is a big problem tomorrow morning.

Dave Lundgren  36:19

Well, those actually, those are the two questions that I wanted to ask you, as it relates to your studies of these mega markets was one, I seem to recall you saying that during the war time, the government spends a significant percentage of GDP on advancing technologies to win that war. And then eventually, during peacetime that technology finds its way into the economy just by being commercialized into the consumer markets and things like that. So I’d be curious how you think that’s going to play out with respect to what we just did, and the money we just spent would be number one. And then number two, when you look at the various mega markets, was there a commonality in the inflation cycles? Were there ever high inflation when the markets did well, it was always low inflation and low rates being is that obviously, because the big question of today is, are we on the precipice of an inflationary cycle? While there was inflation due to the war, there was usually some kind of a recession historically, that again, a lot of this happened before the Federal Reserve in 1913 came out and they actually didn’t do well in the 1929 crash, they didn’t really know what the heck they were doing. But there are a lot better at it today.

Ralph Acampora  37:25

Yes, I think we’re gonna have inflation and a point is it’s the emotions of people talking about a world where not only here we feel more pain and anxiety, it’s all over the world. This is going to take – the British want to go travel and the poor Indians in India are suffering like crazy. Now, once that is past, it’s over, money is no object people gonna want to live, I think the government’s gonna be very, very accommodating.

Dave Lundgren  37:54

And as it relates to the technology spend that we just went with at the government level, seeing that spillover. Yeah, you still think that’s –

Ralph Acampora  38:02

Absolutely lovely. And they’re talking now about, you know, I just saw on TV today, Uncle Sam wants to – the government wants to really get into making our own semiconductors. You know, we realized with this whole thing that we got certain industries, like the medical, what was it? The pills or something from overseas in China was making them and yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, a lot of that’s just going to come back. Oh, yeah. changing technology. We learn a lot with this, with this COVID.

Dave Lundgren  38:33

Yes, just trying to looking for the common themes from Mega Markets. And “mega market” was just this notion that what ended up driving that mega market was not known at the time it started. That’s the part that we grapple with. And Ralph, you were mentioning, you know, we have all these terrible headlines, and you’re talking about India and everything else, but the market is doing what it’s doing. And that’s the market. And its infinite wisdom is the collective wisdom of the crowd, if you will, sniffing out that future. And we can’t put our minds around it, because we’re going through the dire circumstances of the moment.

Ralph Acampora  39:00

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And it is a discounting mechanism, looking beyond all this, right, you know, we’re gonna have a conversation, you’re either – three of us, maybe five years from today, we’ll look back and say, Oh, look at this, the market was going up in anticipation of this, this and this. Right. Now, yes.

Dave Lundgren  39:20

Yeah, that’s a really important observation. It’s just a tremendous contribution on your part, because I think that really bore out from the data that you presented in your fabulous book, I have to tell you, I’m pretty excited about your next book, as I understand you’re writing on another book.

Ralph Acampora  39:32

This book is going to be – if anyone likes history, you’re going to love this book. Yeah. And I only say that because well, let me tell you quickly, I am asked periodically to give lectures at St. Thomas University, which is a wonderful university here in St. Paul, Minnesota. And after I give a lecture or two, I participate in classes. I usually invite the students and some of the professors out to my barn, and they can see some of what Tyler was talking about before the big charts inside, and then I take them around, you heard about my painting outside the exterior walls and like I have the entire history of the stock market, going back from 1857, that was the McCauley railroad average. And then it picks up the cartels index. And of course in the late 1800s, Dow Jones, industrial average and railroad and I have everything and all the history. And while walking around with the dean of the school and the students I turn to I said, you know, being I said, to get a sense that the young students today have no sense of economic or financial history. And she turned to me and the other professors all that that means you’re absolutely right. We don’t teach a class on economics history or financial history. And she yells at me, she says, I want you to write a book and incorporate this whole chart that you’ve got all the way to recessions and everything. And that was the start of the book. And I gotta tell you, I was going to start right where my wall starts, making 1857. But I realize, Hey, 81 years before that, we signed the Declaration of Independence. I can’t talk about economics unless I go back to the beginning. Well, and I realized that economics and finance and not standalone subject, what was the president doing? Or didn’t do that cause some reaction in the economy, you know, you know, what happened to the First National Bank, Andrew Jackson, number seven, president united states canceled the bank, they didn’t like it. He wanted states banks. He didn’t want a Federal Bank. He wanted states to create their own paper money and that stuff, by gold, oh and the debate about currency goes on for at least 100 years. That’s fun. I really, really enjoying it.

Ralph Acampora  40:24

What a contribution this would be. I am so excited for it. I can’t – When did you have an estimate for when you think it’ll be done? That’s it.

Ralph Acampora  41:48

Everybody asked me that. I’m, I know it’s going to be 25 chapters. I’ve completed chapters one through four where I feel comfortable with, but it’s gonna it’s gonna take another couple of years.

Dave Lundgren  42:00

I wrote a chapter for a textbook on technical analysis, and just that one chapter alone took me I think it was nine months. So your chapter sounds like a daunting task.

Ralph Acampora  42:10

I asked Sam Stovall, to give me a paragraph to put in the book, who’s a better historians? Yeah, yeah. I asked Maria Romo. If she would write a couple of paragraphs on what it was like any TV on the floor of the stock exchange, she changed the world. Right? That woman did that. In fact, the studio on the floor, I call it the house that Maria built. I want that in her own words. And she’s been very kind to do that. And I’m going to ask, buddy, about the history, you know, get us on not to they were there our passion, I hope he responds to my email.

Dave Lundgren  42:47

Now, what was it like, when you got on the floor in 1960? What was it like trading on the floor and the 50s and 60s, early? Did you study history at any point? Or did you just grow to have an affinity for history because of technicals and studying cycles?

Ralph Acampora  43:02

I think. I think it’s in my DNA. I was a history political science. major in college. What happened? I’ll tell you this story. I went to college in the early 1960s. And in my sophomore year, I was offered a weekend job being a tour guide in Washington DC. They would fly me down and I’d need to – actually I had to take an exam. Of course the police department in Washington and District of Columbia had certain exams, so I had to study I could say the Washington Monument, 555 feet 518 inches tall. I mean, I have a lot of fantasy. I can tell you there are several presidents buried in Washington that William Howard Taft is in Arlington National Cemetery, Kennedy’s in National Cemetery. Woodrow Wilson, people don’t realize that he’s in the National Cathedral. He’s buried in National Cathedral. So I have this love for history. I don’t know. I think Tyler you know this on my bucket list. Yes. I have a tour guide. I took them to George Washington’s home in Mount Vernon. And you know, so I saw a lot of presidents and then I have my bucket list is to go to every Presidential Library, home, grave site. I’ve done them all. No kidding. Yeah, I’m gonna write about them in the book. Yeah. So I had this affinity to history. Yes. Fantastic.

Tyler Wood  44:21

Ralph, if I could take us back for just a second to the discussion of what could be the fifth mega market you’ve been attributed as coining the phrase, the bigger the base, the higher in space. And the higher the top, the bigger the drop for you. I mean, I know in our household, two years with entirely sweat pants wardrobe, we’re ready to dress up even without an occasion and I certainly liked that thesis of coming back for the roaring 2020s. Where would you measure the the bear market and would you take it back as far as January of 2018? Or are you looking just at you know, the the collapse? That was very quick from February of last year?

Ralph Acampora  45:02

That’s a wonderful question. If you took in COVID, you got to actually start with March of last year. Now, were we in a bull market? Up to that point? The answer is yes, we were actually started after the 2007 2008 subprime disaster, that low in 2009 was the beginning of this mega market. Again, mega markets with decades, could be a couple of decades. And you do have bear markets in between, of course, the accelerated decline when the COVID hit exaggerated everything. It was an economic situation. I think that low was the beginning of another leg up in this mega market.

Dave Lundgren  45:42

Do you see anything in the markets that would suggest to you that investor concerns about rising inflation? Is something that the markets actually concerned about?

Ralph Acampora  45:50

Yes, it is concerned short term. Yes, yeah. And I think the headlines and everything has got everybody spooked. Now you got Bitcoin falling out of bed, you know, so it’s playing out with each other. If we just stop for a second go back two weeks ago, before this news came out, I remember giving a couple of conference calls and the same to everybody. I said, Well, the markets been really strong, but because of all that sort of stuff. I said, I remember saying to one group, I said, gotta get a nosebleed looking at it down the s&p straight up. I mean, it’s got to pause somewhere. Yeah, and that’s exactly what we’re getting. Now, that pause is being aggravated by this news. So instead of maybe a three to 5%, decline, maybe get a 10% decline. So what, it’s a $20 stock going to 18. Hey, look, that’s $20 back in my books going to 40.

Dave Lundgren  46:42

Now, that’s great perspective, actually.

Tyler Wood  46:44

Sticking with your love of Dow Theory and your expertise in the area. Talk to us a little bit about how that has changed. I mean, in terms of the different types of companies that are in the the transportation average. Now, you talked about the US bringing semiconductors back into, you know, our own production facilities and changing our supply chains.

Ralph Acampora  47:02

How has it changed? Has it changed, I can say that’s a wonderful story, because one of the main ones, and no one talks about this, I don’t think anyone knows it, except me. And […], unfortunately, is not with us anymore. In the very, very beginning of the MTA. Talking about the early 70s 69, 71, we were finally warming up to each other and said, You know, this is fine. At that time, it was called the Dow Jones railroad average. And we’d all sit around the table and say what, you know, Don Jones should change that average, because we have other things other than real world moving products around the country. So I believe that I’ve got to ask him, Bob Farrell, I think Alan, a couple of the old timers, I think they want to the best deal. They’ll knock on the door, the Dow Jones company, I think they were partly responsible for the Dow Jones company changing or updating the indicator, because then all of a sudden, they put airlines in there, they put truckers in there. And now, I was always fascinated with Dow Theory. In fact, Richard Russell, you mentioned his name was the living guru of Charlie Dow. Well, over the years, I got to meet him. Very interesting guy. And lived in La Jolla, California, there was a very popular show called Wall Street week, which started right around the time we got into the MTA. Early 1970s. Apparently, Rukeyser, the host of the show, wanted to do an evening on Dow Theory. And I believe I know I was told that he contacted Richard Russell out in California wanting to come to … Maryland where the show was to do a live interview. And apparently, Richard Russell turned them down. And there was a lady, one of the panelists, and name is Gail Dudack, former president of the MTA and a former student of mine, and that’s how I got to know Gail. She told them, she says, Well, I know another guy who really writes Dow Theory on the east coast. And that was me. And in fact, I think it was in the early 70s that when Alan said, okay, you can start writing, I started writing about that theory. And one of our past presidents, he said, Ralph, you’re, you’re writing Dow Theory, and everybody was reading my work, even my competitors were reading my interpretation because I was very, very dogmatic about the rules and all of the locations on our area. So Gail said to the TV hosts, she said, Well, Ralph Acapora is the guy, the second guy you should call out there and I went on the show in 1978. That was the beginning of you know, my love affair with Dow Theory. And you know, not too long ago, oh gosh, maybe it was five, six years ago, someone was questioning Dow Theory. So come on around. That’s all stuff. It doesn’t work anymore. We have more sophisticated things. People go online and buy stuff online, so you don’t need those airlines and truckers anymore. And I said to this lady was giving me a hard time. I said to her, I said, You’re right, you know, times are different people shop differently and do things. I said, but you know what? Who moves all those boxes? Federal Express, UPS? And guess what? The Dow Jones. So it’s relevant today. It is still relevant.

Dave Lundgren  50:28

Yeah. So your answer would be that maybe you can make some modifications for the idea that semiconductors are a big part of the economy. But at the end of the day, the essence of that notion that put forth 120 some odd years ago, it’s still as relevant today as it was back then.

Ralph Acampora  50:43

The makings of products and industrialism, the guys that ship it. Oh, they are removed a few if your wife shops like my wife. I swear to God, there are boxes outside my door every morning. And they – the FedEx guy and the UPS guy know my dog. They pet my dog and they wave to me and they take off. I have to carry the boxes. And seriously, Rosemary says oh, I don’t shop at all, I don’t shop at all. Again, still delivered. Seriously, and it’s classic. It’s beautiful. My dog Henry is six years old now you’re weighs 269 pounds. And he’s my best friend. English mastiff. That’s why I call him Henry the Eighth. He’s wonderful, gentle, gentle. So it really is.

Dave Lundgren  51:31

So in your I believe over 50 years in the business. As we’re sort of wrapping up here. I’m definitely appreciative of the time you spent with us here. What would you say was or are some of your most enduring lessons that you’ve learned over the years?

Ralph Acampora  51:46

You have to respect what the price is. I appreciate all the indicators. We have RSI, MACD, bollinger bands and all those indicators. I tell anyone who cares to listen, and the most important price on the chart, most important price, you know what the most important price is? The current price. So you look from right, to left, not left to right. That’s how you really draw from right to left to right to the left. And you just go back with your left hand across the chart. Here I am today. Where do they come from? Put that trendline in there. And you know what I see these guys on television drawing lines on charts, this finger. They don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know – seriously read the definition of a trend line, an uptrend has higher lows and higher highs. Remember that? downtrend, lower highs and lower lows and run them correctly. That’s your best friend. There’s a trend. And when you look at momentum, I don’t know the RSI, I know that price.

Dave Lundgren  52:46

Exactly. Yeah, I’ll make it as simple as possible. It’s going down. I got a problem. Discussion you had you had mentioned earlier about between the folks who were analyzing price and the folks who were analyzing volume. And it was price won out because you’re not trading volume. And I think it was you would know better than anybody and but in even in Dow Theory, although they do address volume, they did conclude that it’s not something that you should act on only because even volume itself is in the price. Okay. Yeah. Even though in your reading Good for you. I thought it for a little bit, not as long as you did.

Ralph Acampora  53:26

It’s something that we all love. And I appreciate you guys picking up the banner and you’re the current generation, the new generation of taking care of the organization and spreading the word in this book that I am writing. I’m doing the history of economics and finance and all that stuff. We picked up one of the books that was actually in my library, and I hadn’t seen it in years. It’s called the gold standard, the 50 year history of the CFA charter. I’m going to take pieces out of this book and put it in my book. Oh, yeah. And they talk about the CFA. They started talking about the CFA in the 40s 1940s. But it would took them almost 20 years before they actually had an exam. When we started the MTA. We looked at the CFA and said, You know, they did all the arguing whether it was and then they realize it, the industry needed a body of knowledge analysts, and they needed ethics. And that’s part of everything that we do, we gave you guys and keeping that body of knowledge, keeping it updated. And that’s all again, it’s just the gold standard for technical analysts.

Tyler Wood  54:32

We would not be here without you, I share what most people have experienced that is you spent an hour with Ralph Acampora. You’re gonna want to learn more about technical analysis. We are so grateful to you. But as we’re coming to the end of the interview, I just need our listeners to hear directly from you one of the most important contributions that you’ve made to the organization and to the whole discipline of technical analysis and that is with regard to the CMT program sitting here. In 2021, and we have a fantastic consolidated curricula. We publish these books with Wiley. We have test takers all over the globe in 137 countries. But it wasn’t always like that. I wanted to ask you about the most important day in modern technical analysis history. And if you’d care to share how that process went.

Ralph Acampora  55:18

Friday, December 17 2004, is your most important date modern technical analysis history. Myself, Ken Tower, Barry Stein, David Krauss, we stood in front of about 10 or so SEC lawyers flew them in from Washington to meet but my story starts before that. I was president on 911 with the organization, and I had been in Europe when that happened. I was just horrified like everybody else. Oh, my God. I was so nervous because we had two employees at the time, two ladies, Maria and Shelly. And I didn’t know if they get out alive and well. And I couldn’t talk to anybody in New York. The phones were down. I had to call Johnny Brooks and my buddy in Atlanta, Georgia. So he was telling me what was going on. And everybody made it out of the building, … made it out of the building. so grateful that it was all done well. So when I got home, we decided to have a summit meeting and words of Johnny Brooks in that the summit meeting, I said to them, we get to reinvent the MTA. And Bernadette Murphy, God bless her soul, came up to me and said to me, You know what you got to do Ralph, we got to have this exam. They got to have it done professionally, just like the CFA exam is done. So I outsourced it. And the new word in my vocabulary, our vocabulary became psychometric. Psychometric is the science of giving tests. Okay, fast forward a bunch of years, three years, actually, after we outsource the exam, we’re in front of these lawyers in 2004, one of the lawyers said to me, you know, if your exam wasn’t psychometrically done, you wouldn’t be allowed in the elevator this building. So David Krauss spoke three minutes on the history of subject, Ken Towers for three minutes in the history of the organization. Barry spoke three minutes on the history of the exam. And I had the last five minutes and I get up and I said to the boys, imagine if tomorrow morning you was being mandated to take the medical boards looking at me like I’m crazy. I said to somebody, you could pass Medical Board board you would use this body of knowledge in your daily work is where is it all going? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I said, Well, Patrick, you’re asking me to do and I got on my knees I said please test me on my body and knowledge. We’re not better than what we complement the fundamental side with that allege themselves all wealthy. We see on television, you’re a nice guy and he shoves a chart in my face. And he says, What’s fact on this chart? My knees are like rubber. I said, Oh, got it. This question. I looked at it. I said, prices are flat. His eyes get very big and I put my fingers pounding on his chest. I said in earnings or in estimate, you restate earnings. You never restate this chart. He said. That’s, that’s the most important date because three months later, thank God, we got our accreditation and that exemption.

Tyler Wood  58:18

Series eighty-six exam, correct?

Ralph Acampora  58:21

Yep, exactly. Yes. Series 86 and 87. Get exempted.

Tyler Wood  58:26

Ralph, I’m so thankful for the time that I’ve been able to spend with you over the years and certainly for you taking time out of what is still a very busy life for you in Minnesota. Really appreciate you taking time to share this with us today. Any other final words that you want to share with all of our listeners, not just the CMT community and the members of the Chartered Market Technicians Association but everyone else who’s out there that’s considering getting involved in the markets or considering you know, a career and learning more about technical analysis.

Ralph Acampora  58:55

Just follow the trend. I think it was Bill Clinton had a headline comment he said follow that trend line, not the headline. And I read that quote, make it make it simple guys because I you know, I love the all the technology we have and all the you know, I watch all these TV shows and have all these indicators and lines on the chart and in the middle. You try putting tinsel on a Christmas tree after a while you put all the tinsel and lightbulbs and all that sort of stuff on you lose the train. And that’s what happens with all these indicators. All of a sudden, It’s so confusing. Oh, I say to you just take a lot of that step back. And look at the trend is your friend, trend is your friend.

Tyler Wood  59:39

Ralph, thank you so much. Looking forward to seeing you again soon when we’re all back together like travel reopen until then.

Dave Lundgren  59:49

And I was gonna ask you if you could maybe send us some pictures that we can provide in the Episode Notes for our viewers because they have to see what you’ve done. It’s really truly spectacular. And my concern though Is it the markets gone past the top of the barn hesitant?

Ralph Acampora  1:00:05

The Wall Street Journal came out they wanted to do a story in 2017. I said wait for a little bit. I said one of the Dow goes to 23,000. You can title the article the market went through the roof. Yes, literally.

Dave Lundgren  1:00:22

That’s great. Okay, I’ll show you some pictures. Please do. We’re definitely looking forward to the book. And just echoing Tyler’s sentiments. Thank you so much for your time today. And thank you, for the community, for investors at large.

Ralph Acampora  1:00:36

Thank you. Thank you. I’m looking forward to Tyler to do the eight sessions on basic technical analysis. And I think everyone should just have wonderful slides. And I do the basic stuff. I think, after 50 years of teaching, I think I can present it in a very simple and meaningful way.

Dave Lundgren  1:00:55

Yeah, I’ve seen your presentations. You do very, very well.

Tyler Wood  1:00:58

50 years at the New York Institute of Finance, I think that teaching is worth preserving and sharing with the rest of the world that can’t make it to the corner of Broad and Wall. Yeah, yeah.

Tyler Wood  1:01:14

Fill the Gap is brought to you with support from Optuma. In addition to candidate study of the official CMT curriculum, Optuma provides a full video course, on all of the material that candidates need to know, for each level of the CMT exams. Each course is broken up into modules, ranging from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the complexity and length of the topics being covered. Learn more at Optuma.com.

Dave Lundgren  1:01:49

Tyler, what do you have for us this month in terms of updates for the CMT Association? I know there’s always something going on. What have you got for us this month?

Tyler Wood  1:01:56

Well, there’s never a dull moment. Dave, let me tell you, for the last 25 years, the organization has committed itself to advancing the discipline of technical analysis. And it’s really the members who do that. One of the ways that we measure tremendous success in the field is through the Charles H. Dow research competition. So for new ideas in price analysis and technical market analysis. And this year’s winner is none other than McKenna Barbara for her paper on the efficacy of modified momentum based technical indicators on US equities, really incredible story ran the student managed investment fund in college, she actually started learning about technical analysis before grad school, and when she took a course with Julie Dahlquist, a fellow CMT. And so we’re really looking forward to sharing her study of parabolic SAR, and having her present on a webcast coming up this summer, probably in July.

Dave Lundgren  1:02:50

So that’s really interesting, that sounds really that we haven’t had a chance to read it yet. But that sounds like a really interesting paper.

Tyler Wood  1:02:56

Absolutely. And it’s all based in empirical studies of actually running money. So looking forward to that, I’d encourage all of our members and anybody else who’s listening to check out those award winning papers that have really defined the field. The other thing I wanted to mention is just a series of well wishes to all of our CMT candidates who are sitting for their exams. This podcast is airing on June 11. So we’re coming to the end of the June administration. But we really appreciate everybody around the world who has put in countless hours preparing for those exams, studying and hopefully, we’ve had a really good turnout, both in terms of the remote proctoring as well as the live exam centers. We’re not quite through the COVID pandemic, globally speaking. So I know there are a lot of candidates who’ve had to make some last minute arrangements for remote proctoring out of their natural exam centers. But we wish everyone great success and appreciate everybody being in the program. And finally, Dave, I wanted to mention an upcoming event. Those of you who are still on the learning path, the CMT European Investment summit is coming up on July first and second, we’ll feature the work of just the best of the best in money management and market research from Europe, members of the CMT Association and others are going to share sort of their take on a macro economic view across asset classes, and the technical tools and process that they employ on behalf of their firms and clients. So stay tuned for more information about the CMT European summit, coming up on July 1 & 2. And that’s it for Association business, Dave.

Dave Lundgren  1:04:32

Fantastic. Thank you very much, Tyler.

Tyler Wood  1:04:34

Thank you, Dave. And I’ll see you next time. We’ll see ya.