Ralph Acampora - Don't Ever Fight Papa Dow | #140

In episode 140 we welcome Ralph Acampora. Ralph begins with his background and talks about the accident that left him in a body cast for months. His father’s best friend left a copy of something market related that he was reading when he visited the hospital. That piqued his curiosity, and he later found a job as a junior analyst on Wall Street. It was that job that introduced him to technical analysis.

Meb then gets into technical analysis and what is, and what it means to Ralph. Ralph discusses how he keeps it simple, looking at trends every day with a few indicators. He then goes on to explain Dow Theory before explaining that when he took a look at the market through the lens of Dow Theory, when the Dow Industrials, and Dow Transports hit low points late last year, he saw a downturn signal. He mentions the post-Christmas rally was a nice move in a short period of time, but he refers to it as a “vacuum” rally. The bad news is that he saw the rally encounter overhead resistance and is looking overbought. For this move to sustain, he’d like to see, over the next month or two, the market hold above December lows.

Looking around the world, he sees the DAX in a topping period, and emerging market stocks look like they’re trying to bottom. As far as commodities go, he thinks crude is bottoming as well.

Ralph then gets into how little acceptance there was of technical analysis early in his career, and how he fought for technical analysis.

Meb then asks Ralph to touch on behavioral finance. He discusses how technical analysts have been incorporating behavioral finance for years.

As the conversation winds down, Meb asks Ralph if anything has changed about his approach to analyzing markets, and Ralph quickly says “No,” and talks about how over time, technical analysis is looking at buyers and sellers, which he feels haven’t changed, so he hasn’t changed his analysis.

This and more in episode 140, including a fantastic story behind Ralph’s most memorable trade, and where one of his hand-drawn charts is now displayed.

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