Product Description
Ed Seykota Of Technical Tools by Thom Hartle
Ed Seykota, whose thoughts and insights were chronicled in Jack Schwager's book Market Wizards, has
been involved with trading commodities since the late 1960s. According to Market Wizards, Seykota's
"model account" — an actual customer account — started with $5,000 in 1972 and to date has earned
more than a 250,000% gain. Recently, in a new challenge, he purchased data and software vendor
Technical Tools. S TOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Thom Hartle interviewed Seykota in a series of written
correspondence that took place over several months ending in May 1992, during which Hartle posed a
number of questions relevant to all traders, including any secrets to trading successfully. Not too
surprisingly, the answer to that was the same answer as for any endeavor — persistence and
commitment!
How did you get started in technical analysis? What was your first trade?
The first trade I remember, I was about five years old in Portland, OR. My father gave me a gold-colored
medallion, a sales promotion trinket. I traded it to a neighbor kid for five magnifying lenses. I felt as
though I had participated in a rite of passage. I started early to get interested in technical analysis, too. By
the time I was nine, I had a bedroom filled with old radios, test equipment and oscilloscopes. I liked to
generate and display wave forms . Later, when I was 13, my father showed me how to buy stocks. He
explained that I should buy when the price broke out of the top of a box and to sell when it broke out of
the bottom. And that's how I got started.
"The biggest secret about success is that there isn't any big secret about it, or if there is, then it's a secret
from me, too. The idea of searching for some secret for trading success misses the point. " —Ed Seykota