Foreword

The authors, Richard A. Dickson and Tracy L. Knudsen, deserve high-fives and extra kudos for making a significant and distinct contribution to the understanding and the application of the Wyckoff Method of technical market analysis. From their vantage points at Lowry Research, Dickson and Knudsen clearly and persuasively demonstrate the synergy gained through linking the principles of Richard D. Wyckoff with the research findings of L.M. Lowry. In this book, the authors show us how to use the Buying Power measure and the Selling Pressure indicator of Lowry Research to garner deeper, more accurate, and more relevant applications of Wyckoff’s Law of Supply and Demand.

In my quest to understand the essence of Wyckoff, I frequently became stymied by the ambiguity of simple bar charts of price and volume when trying to decipher the relative impact of demand vs. supply in a given price action. But now, thanks to this book by Dickson and Knudsen, the separate measurements of demand and supply, using Lowry’s indicators of Buying Power and Selling Pressure, offer the breakthrough I’ve needed. I now have the deeper, clearer, more efficacious grasp on the Wyckoff Method that I’d been seeking.

With clear-cut criteria and rich, understandable examples, Dickson and Knudsen whisk away the fog that surrounds simple bar chart analysis. They persuasively demonstrate how Lowry’s indicators of Selling Pressure and Buying Power can help the analyst or the trader/investor to make timely and accurate judgments. They illustrate how to diagnose and then anticipate both the powerful bull market of the 1980s-90s and the devastating bear markets of the early 2000s. Dickson and Knudsen offer analyses of additional major bottoms and major tops to give the reader convincing evidence of the edge to be gained by uniting Lowry’s Buying Power and Selling Pressure with Wyckoff principles.

As an additional bonus, the authors show how Wyckoff’s Point-and-Figure Charts plus non-Wyckoff advance-decline indications are useful market tools for augmenting the Supply and Demand study of market tops and bottoms.

Finally, the reader can rely with great confidence upon both the technical competence and the personal integrity of Dick Dickson and Tracy Knudsen. I’ve been a professional colleague of Dick Dickson for numerous years. I was present in 1997 when Dick received from the Market Technicians Association (MTA) the well-deserved “Best of the Best” Award for his many accomplishments in technical market analysis education. In addition, I have had the pleasure of speaking with Tracy Knudsen at various Technical Analysis conferences throughout the country and can vouch for her knowledge and experience in the field of Technical Analysis. Prior to joining Lowry’s, she was the Senior Technical Analyst at the highly respected firm, Stone and McCarthy Research, and then worked closely with noted Technician Steve Nison as Senior Market Strategist Candlecharts.com. I believe that this book, Mastering Market Timing: Using the Works of L.M. Lowry and R.D. Wyckoff to Identify Key Market Turning Points, is one of the high-point achievements of both their careers.

Henry O. (Hank) Pruden, PhD. Professor of Business and Executive Director of the Institute for Technical Market Analysis in The Ageno School of Business, Golden Gate University, San Francisco, CA U.S.A. Hank Pruden is author of The Three Skills of Top Trading, Wiley Press, 2007.