Symposium Time: Learn – Connect – Grow

The 2019 TAN Association Annual Symposium will take place April 4-5 in New York City.  We will gather with 250-300 peers and thought leaders from around the world and discuss markets, share ideas about all things technical, and size up the industry.  

Bill Kelleher, Tyler Wood, Alvin Kressler and the staff at the TAN Association have a fantastic program lined up with prominent practitioners from around the globe. This year’s event theme is Behavioral Finance. It’s a timely and important subject to understand. In fact, Richard Thayer received the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2017 for his work on Behavioral Finance; even academia recognizes the importance of this topic.  

I’ve made my plans to attend and I’m excited about our premier event of the year! Please consider joining us – you’ll be glad you did.

Now, before you dismiss my message as some advertising blurb that

2018 was a year of star-studded events for the Chicago TAN Association chapter, culminating on November 8^th with JC Parets, CMT, of All Star Charts. Also presenting at the meeting was Tom Bruni, who is a technical analyst at All Star Charts. As per usual with meetings featuring JC, the house was full with 47 members and guests. Seats were in shorter supply than liquidity in the Greek bond market.

Convening in the original conference room at the Chicago Board of Trade, JC and Tom covered a wide array of markets. Weakness in regional banks and strength in palladium were two take-aways and the trends in those markets continued in the following weeks.

The Chicago Chapter was fortunate last year to feature presentations by Jim Bianco, CMT, Katie Stockton, CMT, Steven Quimby, Richard Ross, CMT, Stanley Dash, CMT, Robert Pardo, Andrew Thrasher, CMT, Gina Martin Adams, CMT and Stan Harley.

We also started

When asked what he thought about the career path for market technicians, industry veteran Rick Bensignor said, “I wouldn’t in a million years recommend anyone try to make a living simply doing technical analysis. There is simply no market for it.”

This statement is not as dire as it looks and let’s state up front that Rick believes 100% in technical analysis. He simply acknowledged that the business has drastically changed since he read his first chart over 40 years ago.

This does not seem to be the type of article you expect to read in the TAN Association newsletter. But it is an important one. Let’s quickly shift to why.

In numerous interviews over the years, Bensignor usually offers one sharp insight, “Technical analysis is a skill, not a career.” What that means is that it is a tool people can use to do their primary jobs better.

TA improves one’s ability, but

Please tell us what you do professionally. I am retired now from a 42-year career practicing law and serving as a trial court judicial officer. My involvement in technical analysis has chiefly revolved around the Market Technicians Association (TAN Association) in whose activities I was involved almost from the first day of my first MTA conference in 1987. In my first 20 years of membership, I served on every committee of the MTA. My legal background allowed me to serve in many ways and events. Today, I focus on the history of technical analysis and its preservation.

How did you get there? I graduated from law school in 1971. After serving in the military, I moved to Arizona, where I resided all my adult life.

My interest in financial markets began as a private investor when, in the spirit of helping my community, I bought shares in new local companies. In order

The 2019 TAN Program texts are now available from Wiley at https://www.efficientlearning.com/cmt/.

This year, in addition to keeping the content robust and consistent with the goals of the TAN Program, special attention was given to the learning structure and reading flow of the texts, particularly Levels I and II.  This should make the study process smoother and better support candidates in persevering through each level.

Here’s a summary of the changes for 2019:

In the texts for all three levels, the Learning Objective Statements (LOS) that appear at the beginning of each chapter have been rewritten to serve as a better guide to the critical points in the chapter.  (The LOS are available in pdf on the Association website: Level I LOS, Level II LOS, Level III LOS.)

As noted in the front of each text:

A list of Learning Objectives appears at the beginning of each chapter.  These