Interview  |  DEC 2004

Interview: Larry Connors On How Markets Really Work by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Stocks & Commodities V. 22:12 (74-79): Interview: Larry Connors On How Markets Really Work by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan Laurence Connors is chairman and chief executive officer of TradingMarkets.com, a financial markets information company he founded in 1998. With more than 22 years’ experience in the financial markets industry, he is also the managing director of Connors Capital, a private investment company. Larry Connors has also authored topselling books on market strategies and volatility trading, including Street Smarts (with Linda Raschke), How Markets Really Work, Connors On Advanced Trading Strategies, and Trading Connors VIX Reversals. His opinions and insights have been featured or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, Bloomberg TV, Bloomberg Radio, Dow Jones Newswire, Yahoo! FinanceVision, Los Angeles Times, E-Trade Financial Daily, Futures magazine, Technical Analysis of STOCKS & COMMODITIES, and others. He has been a featured speaker at a number of major investment conferences over the past decade. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan interviewed Larry Connors on October 7, 2004. Q: Larry, how did you get interested in technical analysis? A: Back in 1987, there were very few books written on trading or technical analysis. My goal was to be able to trade for myself on a full-time basis, and support my family. It took seven years before I was comfortable enough to do this for myself. The path to the same goal is probably a lot smoother today, because of the amount of information that’s out there. But back in the late 1980s and early 1990s it didn’t exist. In 1994, I left Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette and started my hedge fund. Also at the time, I co-authored a book, which McGraw-Hill published, and also began publishing my own research. Q: And that’s what you’ve been doing for a while now, right? A: We’ve been publishing now for approximately 10 years. In our latest book, How Markets Really Work, there’s been an evolution of my own thinking. We’re at the stage right now where, if it can’t be quantified, we’re not going to trade it. We need to have statistical analysis behind it.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan