I began my career as a technical analyst on Wall Street in October of 1964 working for the brokerage house F.I. Dupont & Co.
The job itself was as a posting clerk in the technical Research
Department, and my duties included updating a 4000 Point and
Figure chart library every morning before the opening bell.
Every chart was to be ready before the opening and done neatly
in pencil. It was about as far down on the Wall Street food chain
as you could go in those days, but at least it got me into the
game. Make no mistake about it, being given that opportunity
by my friend and mentor, John D. Greeley, has made me very
grateful to this day. I was able to land a job in lower Manhattan simply because the daily trading volume on the New York
Stock Exchange had expanded all the way up to the breakneck
level of 5 million shares a day. The Street was having a hard
time keeping up with the increase in activity, so hiring new
blood was the order of the day. It was an era of new trends in
business and in our social lives. Innovation in technology was
touching every single area.
This atmosphere was a result of a very healthy economy,
low interest rates, low inflation, and a recent military success,
a la the Cuban missle crisis. It was hard to argue with success,
for the United States was running on all cylinders. The rate of
unemployment would drop in the 1960s from 7 percent in 1959