until the start of the next great bull market in 1983. Even with

that, the 1968 level was only exceeded three times over the next

30-plus years. Given the fact that the capitalization of the total

market in the 1960s was a lot smaller than today, I’d have to

say those were very impressive numbers indeed. Of course, with

all these new deals hitting the market on a daily basis, the average trading volume exploded. The explosion of volume was

Wall Street’s way of expressing its acceptance for any new idea.

Between 1960 and 1970, daily trading volume on the New York

Stock Exchange increased from approximately 2 million shares

a day to over 15 million shares a day.

From my vantage point there were a number of events that

occurred on the Street within a fairly short period of time that

helped to shape modern technical analysis. For one thing, with

the sharp increase in daily volume, Wall Street brokerage firms

were pressured to answer more requests for stock ideas from the

customers, who were getting more aggressive as the market rallied. The public wanted to enter into the stock market, and technical analysis was there to fill in the gaps. This also was the time

when analytical computers first appeared on the scene that would

prove to be the launching pad for many new technical indicators.

Finally, the advent of a major long-term bear market in the second half of the 1960s moved technical analysis into the spotlight

and propelled the art to center stage of the financial world. You

see, a technician’s function is to interrupt charts based on the

“price” facts. To a good technical analysis, a sell opinion is the natural progression in a stock’s life. A stock will rise in price, then

flatten out, and then start its decline. At the time not only were

sell ideas a no-no on Wall Street, but many fundamental analysts

feared for their jobs if they did tell accounts to sell. It just wasn’t

done, for the simple reason that technicians were better suited to

sell stocks on breakdowns of chart patterns that made us more

popular during bear markets.

Despite the bear markets from 1966 to 1974, most of the

technical analysts I knew did fine in those days as long as we

kept to our knitting. I recall once that I tried to stray off the

path and did not recommend a sale of a stock that had broken

a support level because it was a “good company.” Also, I believed

that it was a “solid value” a nd perhaps a small violation of a