Interview  |  NOV 2003

Interview: Trading Futures With Charles LeBeau by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Interview: Trading Futures With Charles LeBeau by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan Charles LeBeau, who has been trading stocks and futures for more than 40 years (20 years of which was with E.F. Hutton & Co.), is a noted author, lecturer, and system developer and the co-author of Technical Analysis Of The Futures Markets, which is considered a classic of technical analysis. Currently, LeBeau is director of trading for Tan LeBeau LLC (www.tanlebeau.com), where he supervises the trading for a small hedge fund. He also operates an educational website for stock and futures traders at www.traderclub.com. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan called LeBeau on September 4, 2003, to chat about futures trading. How did you first get involved in trading? Back in the early 1960s, my professors at California State University, Long Beach, were authors of several best-selling books about trading in the stock market and the commodities market. Their names were Richard Teweles, Charles Harlow, and Herbert Stone. I took an investment class from Harlow, and he took a liking to me and became my mentor. He was a third-generation commodities trader, and he taught me about trading commodities. I used to make commodity charts for him using data from The Wall Street Journal. Those simple, handmade bar charts and point & figure charts were considered state-of-the-art technical analysis back in those days. I made my first trade in corn on the Chicago Board of Trade in 1963 while I was still in college. I made a couple of hundred dollars and I was hooked on trading. I’ve been doing it ever since.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan