Richard A. Dickson - Technical Analysis Trading Methods and Techniques

Trading Systems of a Market Master

Ed Carlson

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Printed in the United States of America

First Printing August 2011

ISBN-10: 0-13-269906-0
ISBN-13: 978-0-13-269906-8

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Carlson, Ed, 1959
George Lindsay and the art of technical analysis : trading systems of a market
master / Ed Carlson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-13-269906-8 (hbk. : alk. paper)
1. Lindsay, George, 1906-1987. 2. Technical analysis (Investment analysis) I. Title.
HG4529.C3676 2012
332.63'2042dc23
2011017617

This book is dedicated to my wife, Keika, for her patience and support during the writing of this book.

And to our young son, Edward Kazuya, whose big smile and glowing optimism brightened even the darkest days and who was always there to enthusiastically applaud even my most meager accomplishments.

The Author would like to acknowledge and thank the following people for their help in providing the information necessary to make this book a reality. Their help ranged from personal recollections to providing actual research and correspondence from Lindsay. They are presented in alphabetical order.

Stephanie Cassidy (Archivist, Art Students League of New York)
Phil Covato
Arch Crawford
Peter Eliades
Carl Futia
Yale Hirsch
Karen E. King (Curator, National Public Broadcasting Archives)
Larry Pesavento
George Schade
Larry Williams
Jonathan Wood

Very special thanks are owed to the following people:

John Bollinger, who shared a treasure-trove of old Lindsay newsletters and correspondence. This would have been a very different book without those materials. Readers who have been exposed to Lindsays writings only via the Investors Intelligence collection will find their worlds expanded significantly thanks to Johns safeguarding of these materials.

Janice Teisch, widow of Stuart Teisch, Lindsays partner. Janice shared her insiders view of the Lindsay organization. She also had a suitcase full of past reports, photos, and so on, which made a definite impact on this book.

Lastly, a very warm thank you is owed to the family of George Lindsay. Their support and encouragement for this book was second to none. Their intimate knowledge of a man, whom many described as a loner, provided insights which could have come from nowhere else. My thanks go to Vickie Lindsay Gilbert, Don Gilbert, Tamara Mitchell, and, most notably, James Lindsay, whose hours of work, e-mails, and phone calls could never receive their due praise.

Help was also obtained from the following organizations:

The CME Group

Investors Intelligence

To obtain a collection of George Lindsay articles, please contact

Investors Intelligence
30 Church St
New Rochelle, NY 10801
914-632-0422
www.investorsintelligence.com

All price charts were created in MetaStock, Equis.com.

Ed Carlson , CMT, is an independent trader and consultant based in Seattle, Washington. He hosts the MTA Podcast Series: Conversations and manages the website Seattle Technical Advisors.com . Ed spent 20 years as a stockbroker; he is a chartered market technician and holds an M.B.A. from Wichita State University.

R. N. Elliott, founder of Elliott Wave analysis

Who was George Lindsay and why did I undertake to write this book? If youve never heard of George Lindsay, youve already answered the second part of the question. Lindsay was considered a stock guru in the 1960s and 1970s. His market opinions often appeared in the New York Times next to other prognosticators whose names are more commonly known today, but very few people today are acquainted with Lindsay. Even among technical analysts who do know the name, very few are familiar with his work.

Lindsays ideas are in danger of becoming lost to history. He never wrote a book on his market methods, only newsletters. He did write one book (The Other History, examined in of reviewing an untold number of his past newsletters and cobbling together the partial descriptions of his different models into coherent, step-by-step explanations.

Its no wonder that very few market participants have chosen to use his methods. Reading Lindsays newsletters is like drinking from a fire hose. His style of writing is very difficult to read. The reader never gets a moment to catch his breath as the ideas just keep jumping off the page. The presentation format of his newsletters is difficult as well. Modern readers have become accustomed to the formatting of word processorsbullets, labeling, charts placed near the narrative, and so on. As I read Lindsays newsletters, I imagined him sitting at a typewriter, typing to the right side of the page, reaching up with his left hand to shift the carriage back to start a new line, and blasting through yet another line, the ideas pouring forth with very little thought given to anyone trying to assimilate the mass of information being thrown at them.

We live in a world that would send the best and brightest of a generation off to fight and die for the invisible hand of Adam Smith, but ask those same people about technical analysis and they call it voodoo. Those who have accepted and practice technical analysis tend to gather into their own camps of like-mined analysis. Lindsay was an unintentional iconoclast. His approach, while often incorrectly described as cycles, was an original approach different from anything previously known. Like Lindsays mother, who spent the majority of her acting career off-Broadway, Lindsays ideas were decidedly off-Wall Street. Modern technicians often seem to be spending more and more of their time examining the micro30-minute charts, 5-minute charts, tick chartsan approach which, when taken to the extreme, is myopic and can border on nihilism. Lindsay took a broad, perhaps healthier, view of the marketbut one that shouldnt be confused with anything approximating the buy-and-hold approach. While others may focus on the trees, Lindsay was busy mapping the forest.