INTERVIEW
by Thom Hartle
When did you start in the business?
I first started out close to 30 years ago, with a mutual fund company. Unfortunately, that relationship was short-lived because the stock market fell apart and I was laid off. So I took some time away from the business and when I came back, I noticed an ad for a position as a commodity broker. The position was trading on the floor of what was then the West Coast Commodity Exchange. I had a little experience because I had traded commodities while I was in college, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I went to work on the exchange floor, and I got caught up in all of the excitement, but I quickly realized that I still didn't know what I was doing. So I began to read everything that was available. There wasn't much information available back then, but as I looked at everything, I became interested in researching cycles.
Why cycles?
I was looking for something that worked. I had been shown a few systems, but those methods simply churned accounts. But I could see a rhythm to the markets that could be tradable.
What happened next?
I found a couple of books published by Ned Dewey. Dewey had been hired by the US government back in the 1930s to determine what had caused the Great Depression.
What was his conclusion?
His conclusion was that it was cyclical in nature and there was nothing that the government could have done to stop it. After that, he left the government and started the Foundation for the Study of Cycles. The Foundation publishes a magazine, and has since the 1950s. So I read their research on cycles. Plus, I studied The Catalogue of Cycles, which lists about 20,000 different cycles. It became very clear to me that there are cycles all around us.
How did you bring this to trade the markets?
It made sense to me that if the long-term cycles existed, then short-term cycles should work, too. I set out to work with shorter cycles in the markets. Because cycles gave me an element of time, I started to make price and time forecasts based on the shorter-term cycles.
And your newsletter HAL Commodity Cycles followed?
Ultimately. Before I started the newsletter, I was doing my own research, and during that time, the classic The Profit Magic of Stock Transaction Timing was published. After the book was published, the author, J.M. Hurst, started holding workshops. Apparently, there were a lot of closet cycle technicians, and we all went to his workshops. I met a lot of people who were as intensely involved in the markets and cycles as I was. It was during that time that I decided to start HAL Commodity Cycles.
How long did you publish the newsletter?
I published it for 12 years, and it was profitable 10 out of 12. I wrote it as an educational newsletter because I realized that what people needed in the futures business was education. I wanted to demonstrate cycles to the public and show how cycles could be used as a forecasting tool for trading purposes.
What does HAL stand for?
High and low risk. However, I quickly discovered that everything was high risk. While I was very accurate in my early years, I tended to struggle later on, probably because I became too deeply involved in my new studies, of technical analysis.
FIGURE 1: CONTROLLED RISK MONEY MANAGEMENT. In order to trade two contracts, or multiples of twos, a low dollar risk is necessary. Along the way, Bressert added a third contract, and that way he was in for a longer-term move. So the smaller the dollar risk, the more contracts Bressert could put on and the more he could take off of his number 1 contract at his first target.
I think that very few people have the temperament to be a trader. If they are born with it, then they probably have a hard time being a member of the human race.
