MTA Membership:

A few announcements that may interest you:

• Recently, the Nominating Committee of the Board submitted its Slate for Officers/Directors at-large for voting by the Membership at its next Annual Meeting, scheduled for May 17, 2008. In the coming weeks we will open the voting for this slate.

Please view the article on page 9 for full details on the slate and the electronic voting process.

• A one-day MTA Symposium event will take place at the Bloomberg facility (59th and Lexington Ave) in New York City on May 16, 2008. During this one-day symposium, the MTA will, among other presentations, have a “Favorite Sectors and Best Ideas in 2008” panel (Moderated by Thomas Keene, with Louise Yamada and John Roque confirmed as panelists), celebrate and hear from this years Service and Charles Dow Awards recipients, discuss the current “State of the MTA” and have one or two keynote presentations from some

Readers of Technically Speaking are doubtlessly aware of the stunning collapse of Bear Stearns (BSC). The question that naturally arises in such cases is whether or not technical analysis would have gotten you out of the stock. A classic post mortem of Enron done by Dorsey Wright and Associates (http://www.dorseywright.com/internal/index_enron_int.htm) clearly showed that Enron should have been sold early in its collapse. From the perspective of an individual investor, the case against BSC is no less compelling.

The weekly chart is shown in Figure 1. Some may see a head-and-shoulders top with the head forming at the beginning of 2007. The break below 140, followed by a small throwback, was clearly bearish. That run-up was not confirmed by momentum indicators, RSI in this chart. A larger topping pattern, perhaps a rounding top, and support were broken at 100 in late 2007. The price was decisively below its 50-week moving average by

Scott Petruska, a Vice President in the International Department of Commerce Bank, NA, in Kansas City, spoke at a meeting of the MTA Denver Chapter on March 13. The MTA partnered with the local CFAI Society to sponsor the meeting. Attendance totaled about thirty, with slightly more CFA participants attending.

Recognizing the diversity of his audience, Scott began with an overview of the foreign exchange markets. Having been involved with these markets for more than 30 years, he is an expert and was able to explain the concepts in an easy-to-understand manner. Foreign exchange, Forex or simply FX, are all terms used to describe the trading of the world’s many currencies. With nearly 180 countries, there are virtually an unlimited number of possible pairs for trading. The Forex market is the largest market in the world, with trades amounting to trillions of dollars every day, dwarfing the size of global stock

It’s a pleasure writing here after signing the MTA/ASTA agreement. Actually, my pleasure is doubled, once as the ASTA (Arab Society of Technical Analysts) President and once as an MTA member.

As you know, a collaboration agreement has been signed between the ASTA and the MTA, effective April 1. According to this agreement, members of the MTA in the Middle East will be members of the ASTA as well, with access to all support privileges provided by the ASTA to its members.

The ASTA is a not- for- profit professional organization for technical analysis professionals in the Middle East, headquartered in Cairo, Egypt. Our main goal is to promote technical analysis and to help exchange experiences between technical analysis professionals in the region.

Our activities include technical analysis education, and organizing technical analysis conferences, seminars and meetings. According to the agreement, we will also be promoting the TAN Program in the Middle East,

BREAKTHROUGHS IN TECHNICAL ANALYSIS: New Thinking from the World’s Top Minds
Edited by David Keller
221 pages
Published by Bloomberg Press, 2007

This new book is intriguing on many levels. It serves as a kind of primer for ten fascinating technicians from all across the world, giving a broad sense of the cultural range of applications and creative thinking available to technical analysts today. Each chapter is written by one of the ten “super minds,” and each is concise, informative, and in every case aiming at elaborating the philosophy and character of the technique – the tricky ideas – and uncovering the essence of the theory along with demonstrations of how it works.

The overall feeling is that you are visiting, even having coffee with, one supermind after another. You have the benefit of his/her careful explanation of the model and how it works,