|  JUL 1990

Trading Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal by Hans Hannula, Ph.D., C.T.A.

Trading Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal by Hans Hannula, Ph.D., C.T.A. W.D. Gann once remarked some people would not be able to make money even if they had tomorrow's Wall Street Journal, just because they would be held hostage to fear. In October 1987, I had the trading equivalent of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal. I made more money trading in one day than I thought possible. I must admit, however, that Gann was right. If I hadn't been at least partly filled with fear, I could have made a lot more than I did. I could have paid off my mortgage. To start with, 1987 had been a good year for more than half of it. I was hitting eight out of 10 trades. I should have known. Someone told me once, ""Two things make you vulnerable: success and failure."" Well, this was success, and I was vulnerable. For one, as anyone who runs a hotline or distributes a newsletter or market advice can tell you, some customers who call are really after something else. I had gotten two long phone calls from customers asking, ""When's the big one? When's the top?"" To be quite honest, I had been too busy to even worry about when the top would occur. After all, if you can catch the intermediate swings, why worry about the big one?

by Hans Hannula, Ph.D., RSA, CTA