Breadth Thrusts & Bread Crusts: What I Picked Up At The Symposium: Five Things I Want To Keep, One I Want To Drop

JC Parets
May 5, 2022

From the desk of Willie Delwiche.

I had a great time in DC last week, first for some dedicated time with the All Star Charts team that is normally dispersed all over the world, and later at the CMT Symposium itself. There was good food and drink and great conversations – in larger settings and small. 

As great as the presentations were overall, I often found myself chewing on asides and tidbits more than the large macro points. For me, the key insights were more about process and less about conclusions. Maybe that’s not surprising. Conclusions come and go based on market conditions. But process and approach should be consistent (though not immune from the refiner’s fire). I think Tyler Wood said it best last week, “We’re not predicting the future, just reacting responsibly.”

Things I picked up last week that I want to hold on to:

More Isn't Always Better - This came from an insight-filled keynote presentation from John Roque and George Noble, two pros who have been at this a long time. There was plenty of banter and jesting along the way, but it was a slide early on that really caught my attention. It showed that starting at low levels, increasing inputs increased both the accuracy of the analysis and the confidence in the analysis. As inputs further increased, accuracy of the analysis plateaued but confidence in the analysis soared. Now I am looking at my own work to see if there are areas where I am adding more just for the sake of more. I’ll try to eliminate redundancies. One more indicator isn’t always necessary.

Know Thyself - Some of the best presentations last week weren’t even presentations. They were conversations filled more with personal applications than market insights. Dan Russo’s comment about how starting in the market in 2000 impacts some of his tendencies today. As someone who started just a few months earlier (November 1999), that certainly resonated with me. Knowing our tendencies and our biases is an important bit of self-awareness. Having a discipline in place to not let those biases carry the day is vital. 

Related to this, earlier in the week someone saw that I had an actual physical copy of the Wall Street Journal. He was puzzled and wondered if there was something in it that I couldn’t get online. My answer: there was nothing that I couldn’t get online, but plenty that I wouldn’t get online. When we search online we find what we are looking for. Paging through the newspaper helps me see stories that I would not have otherwise come across. I feel like that helps push against my biases and broadens my horizons, so I’ll keep the print edition. 

Try Something New - Helene Meisler’s presentation began with everyone getting a page of TEKNIPLAT Chart Paper and a sharpened No.2 pencil. We were going old school and putting pencil to paper. Seeing a room full of CMTs looking around dumbfounded trying to figure out how to draw charts by hand was definitely a highlight. Helene’s story began with the need to learn something new and finished with the benefits she has derived from that over the years. Her market insights were keen, but it was her journey that I found most valuable.  

Something that Everyone Knows. . . -  The symposium officially began on Thursday. Earlier that morning, the AAII weekly sentiment survey showed, among other extremes, the lowest ratio in bulls vs bears since 2009. Not everyone included a mention of this in their presentations, but plenty did. I would say it was the single-most often cited data point mentioned by the speakers. I like to look at sentiment data as much as (honestly, probably, more than) the next guy, but when something gets brought up so widely, I can’t help wondering if there is still any information there. It wouldn’t be the first time that an indicator’s popularity has ruined it. In the words of Bernard Baruch, “Something that everyone knows isn’t worth anything.”

Simple over Complicated - The All Star Charts banner that we had up at the symposium said it best: “Markets are complicated. We keep it simple.” Amid the noise and narratives, as investors we are looking for assets that are rising in value and trying to avoid those that are falling in value. Our tools and indicators serve that purpose. Various speakers hit on this theme. We need to keep it front and center, whether we are sharing perspectives with others or making investment decisions of our own. For me, it’s figuring out how to boil it down to something that my mom could understand (whether or not she would be interested is another story).

While much of what I brought home from the symposium I want to hold on to, there is one thing that I am eager to get rid of:

COVID - That’s right, it’s fair to say that I have never been to the CMT Symposium and not gotten COVID. It’s still out there, so be safe when you gather together with others. I’m starting to feel better and am looking forward to getting my energy back. The upshot is that I’ve had a comfortable room at home in which to isolate and, so far, I haven’t passed it on to anyone else. 

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