Interview  |  OCT 2005

Interview: Crosscurrent’s Keith Raphael by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan

Stocks & Commodities V. 23:10 (54-63): Interview: Crosscurrent’s Keith Raphael by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan Keith Raphael, president of Crosscurrents Investment Advisory, served as principal of the Taylor-Raphael Group commodities trading firm of the New York Commodities Exchange from 1978 to 1986. He traded ECU arbitrage for Bank Brussels Lambert in New York from 1987 to 1990 and served as chief technical market analyst for Chase Manhattan Bank from 1990 to 1993. In 1993, the Euromoney survey of the 400 top corporations, investment banks, and funds in the US and Europe named Raphael as the top technical market analyst and charting service. In 1992 and 1993, the Greenwich Associates survey of 350 North American corporations, investment banks, and funds awarded him the same ranking. STOCKS & COMMODITIES Editor Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan interviewed Raphael via telephone on August 10, 2005. Q: How did you get started in trading? A: I came out of the University of Vermont in 1978 with an international economics and business background. Despite that fundamental background, I spent time doing statistical analysis for my courses. I got interested in gold charts because I was doing analysis on gold and how some of its movements affected statistics. After I graduated, a friend invited me to work for him on the floor of the commodity exchange. At that point, I was still interested in statistics, so I applied my knowledge of statistics to charting. That triggered my interest in trading. Through 1980 in the massive gold move, I started doing some trading, which was, of course, really volatile and dangerous at that point. But I really enjoyed it, and I started to use pure technical analysis for all my trading. That’s how I started—from statistical to basic technical analysis, then applying one to the other and developing my own concepts.

by Jayanthi Gopalakrishnan