V.4:4 (136-138): Wyckoff in action by David H. Weis

Wyckoff in action by David H. Weis

In 1908, Richard D. Wyckoff began publishing The Ticker, a monthly magazine designed to educate the public on how to understand and profit from the stock market. The early popularity of this magazine can be attributed to the series of articles which Wyckoff wrote on tape reading. He had spent 20 years on Wall Street and learned the secrets of the most successful traders who studied every transaction on the stock ticker. In describing James Keene, a successful syndicate manager, Wyckoff mentioned how he pored over the tape as if in a trance, analyzing "prices, volumes, and fluctuations down to the finest imaginable point."

Wyckoff, too, mastered the art of tape reading which he defined as a "method for forecasting from what appears on the tape now, what is likely to appear in the future." By studying the flow of buy and sell orders into the marketplace, Wyckoff learned to recognize the behavior on the tape that revealed large interests building a position prior to a markup or markdown in price.