Overview to the Markets - Essay Example

This paper is a critical evaluation of their trading background, investment style, performance and viewpoints about the stock markets. Market Approach- Philosophy, Methodology and Management Style Larry Williams began to follow markets in 1962 after the Kennedy market crash, realizing that he could have taken the advantage of the crash by taking short position. He has been known as one of the best short-term traders who also had a passion for writing, evident in his published books such as ‘How to Prosper in the Coming Good Years’ and ‘The Secret of Selecting Stocks’(Ireallytrade-a, 2011).

He mostly trades in commodities and derivatives and chooses his assets based on their technicals. He has provided various indicators such as Ultimate Oscillator, value measurements and William %R for commodity prices. William %R is a standard momentum indicator and still provided by many websites such MSDN Microsoft and Yahoo Finance (figure 1). In his books titled ‘Long-term Secrets to Short-term Trading’ and ‘how I made one million dollars last year trading commodities’, Larry Williams has given his insights in commodity trading.

In 1987, he won Futures trading World Cup Championship sponsored by Robbins Trading Company but many people considered his winning to be controversial (Strupp, 1999). In 1989 National Futures Association complained that Larry Williams had engaged himself in misleading advertising and lied about his investment record. He was then allowed to be NFA’s board member despite his campaign against NFA for overregulation (Greising & Morse, 1991, p.163). Figure 1: William %R Indicator (Source: MSDN Microsoft, 2011) John Templeton started his career as a Wall Street investor in 1958 and laid the foundation of one of the most successful mutual funds.

He had varied investment philosophy from ‘buy low and sell high’ to ‘extreme pessimism’ by picking bottom-hitting companies (John Templeton Foundation, 2010). His investment style can be best described as ‘Global Contrarian’ in which the investor can profit from mispricing caused by certain crowd behaviour. His investment decisions were based on fundamental analysis. He was regarded as the greatest stock picker by money magazine in 1999 (Green, 1999). In 2005, he predicted the housing market crash to be within five years (Ruddy, 2005).

Investment Background & Performance Larry R. Williams has written dozens of books since 1980 which became best sellers. His credibility was established when he correctly predicted bullish market when others were expecting a slowdown. His trading style relies on the timing tools and indicators that he has personally developed such as Will Go indicator, Ultimate Oscillator, William %R and COT Reports (Commitment of Traders reports). The COT report indicates the activities of commercials, small and large traders.

Figure 1 shows a typical COT index of Gold. Figure 2: COT index of Gold (Source: Ireallytrade-b, 2011) Larry Williams also provides educational materials through Trend TV and Larry Williams University. His methods are followed by lot of people who have made money but they are risky too. Therefore Larry Williams himself never give assurance that there will always be profits and never losses. He also does not believe in buy-and-hold policy. From his book ‘How I made one million dollars last year trading commodities’