Welles Wilder Jr. On Trading, Technical Analysis and the Challenge of Talent
Click here to access our Big Saturday Interview with J. Welles Wilder Jr.
If there were a Mount Rushmore for technical analysts, then there is a good chance that the visage of J. Welles Wilder Jr. would be among those carved into that granite mountainside. Creator of technical indicators ranging from Average True Range and Directional Movement to Parabolic Stop and Reverse and, perhaps his most famous and widely used indicator, the Relative Strength Index, Welles Wilder Jr.’s insights into the behavior of the financial markets is more than just must read material for aspiring technical analysts and technical traders – it is must read and UNDERSTAND material.
J. Welles Wilder Jr.’s book, New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems,
was one of the first books to not only present quantified technical indicators for stock and futures traders. It was also one of the earliest technical analysis books to show the fundamental relationship between price action, indicators used to read subtle differences n price action, and the emotions of greed and fear in the marketplace that create and drive those differences. In fact, reading New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems
is a reminder to many technical analysts that behind the patterns and behind the math are the actions millions of traders and investors engaged in the world’s oldest game of buying cheap and selling dear.
Through the assistance of David Wilder, Welles’s son and a talented market technician in his own right (David is Chief Technical Analyst for Wilder’s Delta Society International), I exchanged e-mails with Mr. Wilder discussing the research that formed the basis of an incredible career as a technical analyst and writer. The cream of the crop of those exchanges is collected below in this weekend’s Big Saturday Interview. In a follow-up interview to be published soon, we will discuss the work on cycles and cyclical analysis that has been the center of Mr. Wilder’s research over the past several years. Be sure to check TradingMarkets for updates on when that second part of our conversation with J. Welles Wilder Jr. will be published.
In the meantime, please enjoy this conversation with a man who is truly a Titan of Technical Analysis, J. Welles Wilder Jr.
Click here to access our Big Saturday Interview with J. Welles Wilder Jr.