Thursday 6 October 2011

Thank You Steve Jobs

I think it was the latter part of 1979 and I had been trading GOLD for a while that I heard about a group managed out of New Orleans by a guy called Tim Slater. It was CompuTrac, the first computerised technical analysis group. It used a computer to chart and analyse the markets. It sure beat drawing my charts by hand. And there was this new thing called "technical analysis". The computer age had arrived for me. I joined.

I'm not sure now, but I think I was member two hundred and something. Other members were George Lane who invented Stochastics, Chaikin, Bressert and many others whose name is part of the technical indicators we see in all the charting packages today.

They mailed me a bunch of stuff in a big envelope, including the specs of a computer. It was an Apple II. Problem was that I lived in Sydney, Australia and there were no Apple dealers there. PCs didn't exist. Worse still, we used 220V electricity while the U.S. used 110V.

Another challenge was that I needed to collect futures daily data every day by modem from Boca Raton, Florida. I had to find something cheaper than a phone call, as phone calls were hugely expensive in those days. I had to set up packet switching through an Australian gateway.

Anyway, after a few phone calls to New Orleans, I got the names of a couple of Apple dealers in New York City. I ordered my Apple II computer, a major effort as credit cards were still in their infancy too.

Weeks later, a big box arrived at customs in Sydney. It had my Apple II, which came with two 5 1/4 inch floppy drives capable of loading 32k each. By the time I was ready to switch to the "IBM Compatible", I was running 5 or 6 Apple IIs every night and had a printout of charts about 6 inches high.

That's my Apple story, thanks Steve Jobs. You invented my first tools that started me on my road to technical analysis and trading profitably.

Here's an ES chart for the pre-RTH Eurotime. I've had quite a few questions about trading the ES before people in the U.S. go to their jobs. Yes, there's plenty of volume. The chart below shows my MarketDelta chart with more of the new things I'm using and that I'll show people at the November Workshop. They can be used in both discretionary trading and in algos, as can all the stuff we will be looking at in the workshop.


3 comments:

  1. Tom,

    Are OS/IN trades entered based on the Keltner Channel or OB/OS of 45CCI?

    thanks, Sean

    ReplyDelete
  2. Tom,
    I love the stories from your past such as this one! Those from the floor are the best...

    Val

    ReplyDelete