ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We do nothing alone.

First my parents-my father, who taught me math was fun and how to fly, and my mother, who had the faith to place her future in my hands.

My wife Dorit, without whom all of this simply would not have been possible, and my daughter Zoe, upon whom the sun does not set.

Jon Ratner, a broker with AG Becker when I met him, now a valued friend, made many things possible, most importantly via an introduction to Charles Speth and Holly Hendricks at whose firm I learned about trading. Later he convinced his office manager to provide me with a quote machine and a desk from which to conduct my seminal operations.

Earl Brian, the chairman of the board of the Financial News Network, who believed both in me and in computerized technical analysis.

Marc Chaikin, Steve Leuthold, Don Worden, and Jim Yates, who taught me concepts and techniques at a time when I was hungry for them, and Arthur Merrill, who set an impossibly high standard.

The data used in the charts and testing process for this book was provided by Bridge, http: www.bridge.com, via Bridge-Station. The testing was largely done in Microsoft Excel. The charts in this book were mostly created with gnuplot, an open-source scientific plotting program. I wrote a gnuplot preprocessor in Microsoft Visual BASIC that retrieved the Bridge data via DDE, prepared the gnuplot scripts, and wrote data files for the charts.

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Acknowledgments

Open-source software is the cutting edge of the computer world, and I am deeply indebted to the many fine programmers who so selflessly contribute their fine work to operating systems such as Linux and programs such as gnuplot. To find out more about gnuplot, you may visit http: www.gnuplot.org. A starting point to learn more about open-source software is The Open Source Initiative, http: www.opensource.org. Or try the Free Software Foundation, http: www.fsf.org, originators of the free-software movement.

IN THE BEGINNING

Part T introduces the basic building blocks for techinical analysis using Bollinger Bands, discusses the importance of defining and using three different time frames in your operations, and presents the philosophical underpinnings of our work and approach to the markets.