Time the Markets: Using Technical Analysis to Interpret Economic Data, Revised Edition

Product Author Bios

Charles D. Kirkpatrick II, CMT, is president of Kirkpatrick & Company, Inc., a technical analysis research firm that publishes the Market Strategist investment newsletter. During his professional career, he was an institutional salesman, technical analyst, portfolio manager, hedge fund general partner, securities trading firm owner, option trader, floor trader, lecturer at universities, expert witness at security trials, small business owner, charitable foundation organizer and officer, and combat-decorated officer in Vietnam.

A past instructor in finance at the School of Business Administration, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado, and currently Adjunct Professor of Finance at Brandeis University’s International Business School, he is the only two-time winner of the Market Technicians Association’s prestigious Charles H. Dow Award for research in technical analysis and winner of the Market Technicians Association 2008 Annual Award for “outstanding contributions to the field of technical analysis.”

He is a Chartered Market Technician (CMT), a past member of the board of directors of the Market Technicians Association, and past editor of the Journal of Technical Analysis. He is currently on the board of the Market Technicians Association Educational Foundation and a member of the American Association of Professional Technicians (AAPTA).

In addition to more than ten published articles on aspects of the stock and bond markets, he co-authored Technical Analysis: The Complete Resource for Financial Market Technicians, the primary textbook for the CMT program and for university graduate courses in technical analysis, and he authored Beat the Market, a book on relative strength stock selection. A graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard College (AB), and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (MBA), he lives in Maine with his wife of almost 50 years.

In Time the Markets, award-winning technical analyst Charles D. Kirkpatrick applies technical analysis to key economic indicators and shows how to use them to identify market shifts, avoid loss, and become a more profitable long-term investor.

Drawing on many years of publicly available data, Kirkpatrick demonstrates how to uncover powerful buy and sell signals and shows how to incorporate corporate, industry, monetary, sentiment, and market data into reliable timing indicators that can help you recognize impending stock and bond market dangers—and get out of the way.

Relying primarily on proven technical analysis methods, Kirkpatrick incorporates trading system methods that have proven successful in market timing, including trend and momentum analysis, use of protective and trailing stops, and periodicity. Reflecting the latest insights into behavioral finance, he shares important new insight into measuring marketplace momentum and sentiment—helping long-term investors identify and evade the marketplace irrationalities that often cause capital loss.

Table of Contents

Foreword     xiii
Chapter 1: Introduction     1
Chapter 2: Why Time the Market, and Can It Be Done     7
Chapter 3: Technical Analysis     27
Chapter 4: Systems Analysis     49
Chapter 5: Corporate Indicators     77
Chapter 6: Economic Indicators     107
Chapter 7: Monetary Indicators     127
Chapter 8: Sentiment Indicators     145
Chapter 9: Putting It Together     159
Appendix A: System Parameters     171
Appendix B: Model Signals     175
Appendix C: EasyLanguage Programs     179
Index     183