Observations on
Psychology and the Markets
Financial media, specifically financial television, tends to get a bad reputation. People refer to it as noise and discuss how financial TV has a tendency to sensationalize things. Personally I don’t feel that this is a fair assessment, rather I think it is important to look at how you are using financial media to influence your own thoughts and beliefs on the market.
I’m now two months in with my new role as Chief Market Strategist at StockCharts.com and, as expected, my to-do list has seemed to grow exponentially. Besides getting my family all settled in a new region of the country, I’m trying to absorb as much as I can as I meet coworkers and scope out new projects and initiatives.
Settling into my first month doing my new daily show, The Final Bar, one of the biggest lessons I am learning is how to speak more effectively. Throughout the course of my career I have learned a lot about communication, but having only a 30-minute window has given me an entirely new perspective on mindful communication.
Last week I spent time in Minneapolis speaking to the local CMT Association chapter and while I was there we had the opportunity to interview and speak with some prominent technical analysts. One individual we got to spend an unforgettable afternoon with was a friend and personal mentor of mine, Ralph Acampora.
I am just wrapping up my first week of hosting my closing bell show on StockCharts TV, The Final Bar (you can catch it on weekdays at 4pm EST). Most of the days this week I have had the opportunity to have a guest on the show. This has given me the opportunity to pick the brain of some really capable market strategists and analysts. The one thing that has struck me the most is that I give them 3-5 minutes to give me their individual take on the market and most of them are coming at me with really long term charts.
When I first started to learn how to fly an airplane I very quickly learned the value of checklists. You don’t just take the plane out to the runway, and fly. There are a hundred odd meticulous steps you must go through individually to ensure that the mechanics of the airplane are fully functioning, and the safety gear is also ready to go. While a checklist does not minimize the chances of something going wrong, it certainly lessens the probability.
In digging through my cavernous repository of articles in my Pocket queue, I uncovered a piece from Slate that declared The Death of the Telephone Call. I’ll never forget when a prominent investor once shared the story of dismissing America Online as a viable investment option because, “Why would I send someone an e-mail when I can just pick a phone and call them?!?”
This past weekend I had the opportunity to attend the TSAA annual conference in San Francisco. TSAA, for those not familiar with it, is a technical analysis organization founded around 1970. One of TSAA’s founding members, the late Hank Pruden, was a professor at Golden Gate University and a remarkable teacher of technical analysis out on the west coast. It was a unique experience to attend the conference since Hank’s passing in 2018, and see the conference is still thriving and watching Hank’s legacy live on.
