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July 1996
Are you familiar with the adage "History repeats itself"? The STOCKS & COMMODITIES interview this month is with Richard Mogey, the executive director of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, and he has a few comments on that idea. Mogey's experience goes back to the 1970s, and he shares his thoughts built on that experience. In the interview, he comments that history doesn't duplicate itself -- no single event ever recurs, so to speak -- but there are echoes of similar circumstances surrounding historical activities.One case in point is Mogey's observation that the stock market typically has a banner year the fifth year of the decade, and last year's market performance held true to form based on this decade pattern. With that in mind, it will be interesting to see if the market continues to follow the same pattern going forward. Mogey also discusses some of his favorite indicators for the stock market, which happens to be the McClellan oscillator and summation index. If you've been reading S&C for some time now, you'll recall our June 1994 interview with Sherman, Marian and Tom McClellan of McClellan oscillator renown, when they discussed those indicators in great detail. I think that you'll find Mogey's comments interesting for a number of reasons, one of which is that he includes an update on the use of these indicators.
Our feature article this month comes from Barbara Star, a MetaStock users group leader and vice president of the Market Analysts of Southern California. I recently had the pleasure of speaking at their monthly meeting. They have a very well-run organization and if you live in the Los Angeles area, you might want to consider contacting Star about attending their meetings; it could be a good resource for you. Star's article is a new way to use oscillators in a fashion that appeals to me. While the most common use is to look for a form of divergence that is coincident with a market top or bottom, she demonstrates ways to trade using the oscillator to time entries with the longer-term trend, a way that follows the longtime adage (speaking of adages) that "the trend is your friend."
And for you individuals who like systems for the stock market, we have another article from S&C Contributing Editor Dennis Meyers. This month, he looks at the daily advancing and declining volume statistics along with the daily new highs and new lows for a stock market timing system. Meyers, who has published some very fine work with us, continues in his tradition of explaining the steps he took to develop a trading system and detailing the performance.
This style of article is very popular with S&C readers, and if you're someone doing similar work, you really should contact me about working with you on publishing an article on the subject. One really easy way to contact me is via our new E-mail system: thartle@traders.com. Let me warn you, though, about my time constraints. Our policy regarding E-mail is the same as the policy for letters to the Editor. My focus remains the editorial aspects of the magazine, and those are the issues that I will address. If that's your topic, then I'm definitely interested in hearing from you. We're here to spread more information on how to trade and about technical analysis -- and isn't that why you're here, too?
