Tales from the MTA seminar

Not so much tales as reporting what we already knew - volume is not really working so well, and price is still king.

There as a discussion from a floor trader who mentioned ETFs and there ever fluctuating issue sizes. I'll toss in the other non-stock methods for hedging such as options and you can see how someone could hold on to a losing position hedged buy a triple inverse ETF. Figure 1/3 of the volume for that "trade" and then multiply by the number of ways to do it without even using a US based instrument.

I am not an expert in trade strategies so don't flame me if I get the details wrong. You get the idea.  The gist was that volume is less useful than it was and I say it joins tick-based data such as the ARMS index and tick by tick money flow.

Otherwise, the presentations left me wanting more - not because they were awesome but because I wanted to actually learn a few things. It was nice to hear about how the top technicians around the globe got their start and more importantly kept their jobs over the years but that does not help me make money for my clients. It was more of a rah-rah, TA is cool thing and better suited for perhaps a smaller panel as we ate our lunch.

I am indeed sorry I could not make it to the floor of the NYSE for the Wed evening cocktail party. Now that would have been awesome, no matter what happened. But I did make it to the Museum of American Finance Thursday evening for the second cocktail party and presentation of the Annual MTA Award and the Charles Dow Award.

The museum had old technology on display including a Quotron. Who cut their teeth on one of those? And there was also a copy of the NY Times from October 20, 1987 with a chart of the Dow crashing. It was sourced to "Knight Ridder Tradecenter," my employer before Bridge bought it.We were awesome back then.

Anyway, there were presentations on cloud charts, structure of the market from an NYSE insider and others but I still wanted to see a beginner track where we teach a few basic indicators or patterns and an advanced track where cutting edge analysis is presented.  I miss "walkabout" where we had forced socialization and newbies can rub elbows with the legends (I suppose I am neither).

"A" for effort, planning committee for the venue, activities and attention to budget. But I am afraid there really was no distinct theme or and maybe not enough direct benefit for CMT candidates.  Perhaps I am just a dinosaur pining for the old seminars in Florida.