Peter Worden's Frustration

Peter Worden is one of the Worden Brothers of Telechart, TC-2000 and StockFinder fame. I've met Peter and Chris numerous times, if you are using a Worden charting platform I highly recommend you go to one of their free seminars held just about every weekend all around the country, you'll learn more in 5 or 6 hours than in a year of using the programs on your own.

In any case, other than being really patient and nice guys who loved me as I was one of their bigger affiliates and my free site was always on the first page of a Google search for "Worden, their real claim to fame was their father Don Worden who never jumped in to the spotlight, but was the pioneer of modern money flow indicators, although he sold his to Wall St. while other's published so he was not credited as being the father of these indicators despite the fact he was with his first indicator, "Tick Volume". In any case, Don had written a few paper back books that absolutely sent me through the roof when first reading them because it seemed he was slamming technical analysis while selling technical analytical software, but more so just because I had drank the Kool-Aide. Years later I understood the genius of his thinking, it's funny how an underlined sentence in a book takes on totally new meaning after a few years have passed.

In any case, I haven't read the Worden Report since Don passed (Pater his son writes it now), but I just updated some scans and the report came up and the first line caught my attention. Here are some excerpts from the report, I only removed a monologue about how the averages are weighted because it was not 100% accurate and not relevant to the larger subject at hand...

"I'm as bored writing about the mixed performance of the equity markets everyday as I am trading them. The major indexes can't seem to get on the same page and the general lack of direction in the market is wearing traders thin.

The bottom line is at certain times it really can be much more a market of stocks than a stock market. While the various indexes have always operated independently of one another based on the performance of their respective components, the individual personalities of the various market indexes have lately been more pronounced. On any given day, it has not been uncommon for the Dow to close up and the S&P 500 to close down and vice versa. While there was a day not so long ago when the tide moved the vast majority of boats either up or down, the many crosscurrents have become far more complex and more difficult to navigate."

What initially caught my attention was the first sentence being he's such a patient guy and a market lover.

However after reading more, is this not the dispersion we had talked about in the indices months ago? Remember that time when going long meant buying any risk asset because they were all going to move the same.  Those days are gone, the reason has a lot to do with the fact QE is loosing it's dominance as a market driving force, but...

What disappointed me the most about Peter's report was not his lack of enthusiasm, it's being the son of Don Worden, one of the best chart readers I've ever seen and not recognizing the most important thing that he himself rails on about and that is...

THE CHANGE IN CHARACTER IN THE MARKET.

Don Worden would have been writing about nothing but, as we say, changes in character lead to changes in trend and although I get the frustration of the long grind and the dispersion of assets which makes it difficult to look smart in the market by simply being long (nothing I'm accusing Peter of), he is seeing one of the biggest red flags right in front of him, yet missing it entirely.

I guess when you write every day, not everything is going to be great and sometimes the most obvious things are so obvious that you completely miss them, at least he recognized the change in character. I may have to write my old acquaintance.