Richard Wyckoff. Father of volumetric analysis
Today, technical analysis of markets is at the peak of its development, and all this is due to the fact that more than 50 years ago there were people with extraordinary views who were able to formulate their idea.
One of the pioneers in the field of technical analysis at the end of the 20th century was Richard Wyckoff; he gave the world the basics of volumetric analysis, which in subsequent years was transformed into a separate VSA technique.
Let's take a closer look at the biography of this wonderful man.
Biography. Career
Richard Wyckoff was born on November 2, 1873. There is no mention of the legend’s childhood and adolescence.
The only thing that all bibliographers know for sure is that the family was very poor, so from childhood Richard had to work hard in order to somehow help his family.
Richard Wyckoff got involved with the stock exchange through the work he did on one of the exchange floors.
After ten years of work, Wyckoff rose significantly through the ranks and even became an auditor for a large brokerage company.
When the young man was only 25 years old, he decided to become an independent player and opened his own brokerage office.
This decision was inspired by a successful incident when Richard literally earned substantial money in a matter of days - a thousand dollars from one transaction, which at that time was very large money.
Richard was researching stocks in his line of work when he came across a company that he believed had just released an innovative product - a pneumatic horse collar.
Without thinking twice, Richard Wyckoff buys 300 shares of the company and in a matter of days makes his first solid profit.
Scientific activity
As Richard gains experience running his own brokerage firm, he comes to understand that the market is ruled by big players who make the price move.
While working with wealthy clients, he began to clearly see the importance of analyzing supply and demand, but the unanswered question of how to do it remained.
While Dow and other analysts of the time looked only at the chart, Richard Wyckoff began to look at volume.
And then find those very big players and patterns in the movements of the stock after injecting a large amount of money.
It was Richard Wyckoff who first introduced the concepts of accumulation (accumulation of forces) and distribution. Later, Richard plunged into scientific work to improve his approach.
While all the stock market players were viewing the price as chaos, Richard Wyckoff began publishing specialized stock newsletters, which began to be purchased with a bang by clients.
Teaching activities
For the first time, Richard dared to announce himself to the whole world in 1908, publishing an article about his approach in the then famous journal “Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities”.
As Richard Wyckoff improved, he repeatedly participated in various exchange tournaments and won prizes, which brought him and his strategy more and more popularity.
Later, Richard began to actively travel around the country conducting paid seminars, which ultimately led to the creation of a private university, where for a small fee one could complete the entire course of study.
In his book, Richard Wyckoff wrote that stock trading for the purpose of making a profit is called speculation only if there is an attempt to apply analysis to predict the future price, otherwise it is nothing more than gambling.
Richard Wyckoff died on May 19, 1934, and the training school he founded continues to operate to this day.