|  APR 1994

Martin Zweig Of The Zweig Forecast by Thom Hartle

Martin Zweig Of The Zweig Forecast by Thom Hartle Martin Zweig may be a familiar name to you, and that would not be surprising, considering how many different hats he wears: one as editor of The Zweig Forecast newsletter, one as chairman of the Zweig Fund and one as the head of the Zweig Total Return Fund not to mention one as panelist on the popular TV show Wall $treet Week, on which he has appeared since 1974. Zweig, who has $9 billion under management currently, has spent the past 32 years developing his market indicators and models. Stocks & Commodities spoke with Zweig on a variety of topics ranging from the importance of monetary policy for the stock market to sentiment. Marty, when did you first start writing The Zweig Forecast? I wrote my first issue in the fall of 1971. I was teaching at the time and I was offered a position as a consultant to a brokerage firm. My newsletter was intended to be geared to the institutional customers of the brokerage firm, but the firm went out of business before I completed the second issue. Previously, I had written some articles that were published in Barron's, two of which were on indicators based on the options market. Fortunately, the articles generated enough interest in my work that the newsletter continued. When did you introduce your mutual funds? The Zweig Fund was offered in 1986 and the Zweig Total Return Fund was offered in 1988. Now, your years of research indicate that the direction of the stock market is dominated by monetary conditions. How do you monitor those conditions? The majority of the indicators are interest rates. We follow short term, long term and Eurodollar rates. I'm not trying to forecast the rate; what I'm looking at is the trend. We use various exponential averages to smooth out the volatility, and then we look for reversals in the trend. It's pretty simple!

by Thom Hartle