The Ticker Tape:

Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

by Sam H. Hale, CMT

From our markets in the United States, were privileged to have access to the finest data streams in the
world. This has been especially true since the introduction of the ticker in 1867, which is the primary
source for most of the data with which we work.
Nothing can be more important to the analyst than
the quality and integrity of the data being used. The
quality and quantity have grown progressively better since brokers first left their seats in 1871 for
the start of continuous trading. There have been phenomenal technological advances that have accelerated in just the last 30-odd years to the point where
even we professionals sometimes scratch our heads.
There is a two-fold purpose to this article. It will
first present historical insights into the published
works of important tape readers of the past who contributed greatly to our craft. Then it will progress
into the computer era and strive to bring the reader
up to date on the very latest technologies so that he
or she fully understands the tapes composition. The
analyst should derive a deeper understanding of our
basic data source in order to know when and how to
question the reliability of the data as it might affect
a particular application. Readers will be made aware
by examples that just because data streams from a
vendors latest, fastest computer doesnt mean they
can be blindly accepted as being absolutely factual
and/or up to date. Depending upon an analysts specialty, even in something so basic as point and figure
charting, it will be shown how easily a vendors output can be flawed. Hopefully, thinking will be stimulated on ways to expand the use of available data by
illustrating some never before broadly disseminated
indicators developed by the author, that will make
the computer the tape reader.
The Grandfather

of Technical

Analysis

Some analytical techniques and sound philosophy can be traced to the market literature from
around the turn of the century from the pens of
Charles H. Dow and Richard D. Wyckoff . Both were
financial writers uniquely qualified to write not just
from observations and interviews but from practical
knowledge.
Prior to teaming with Edward Jones to form Dow,

10

MTA

JOURNAL

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Jones and Company, which published its first edition of The Wall Street Journal on July 8, 1889,
Charles H. Dow was a partner of NYSE Member Firm
Goodbody, Glynn and Dow. Mr. Dow held the seat
during his mid-thirties and executed orders on the
floor where he obviously gained many insights about
which he would later write, especially in the famous
editorials that appeared in the two-year period prior
to his death in 1902 at age 51.
Mr. Dow, called The Grandfather of Technical
Analysis, was posthumously awarded the 1984 Market Technicians Association Annual Award. His successor as editor of The Wall Street Journal, William
Peter Hamilton, as well as others such as Samuel A.
Nelson and Robert Rhea, further developed Mr.
Dows editorials and systematized what would later
be known as The Dow Theory from his now familiar concepts of market movements.
Mr. Dow wrote of the law of action and reaction in which it seems to be a fact that a primary
movement in the market will generally have a secondary movement in the opposite direction of at least
three-eighths of the primary movement. He also
wrote of double tops, the theory of averages (time
up/down>, periodicity and responsive buying/selling. Mr. Dow noted that this method is employed
more particularly by those who watch the tape. In
his July 20, 1901, editorial, Mr. Dow wrote of the
book method in which prices are set down, giving each change of one point as it occurs, forming
thereby lines having a general direction but running
into diagonals as the market moves up and down.
This method is now popularly known as point and
figure charting. More than 100 professional members of the MTA list this among the methodologies
they employ in their analyses.

1995

The Best Indicator

of Supply and Demand The Ticker Tape
Another market analyst who not only expounded
on this method but also made significant contributions to the study of tape reading, trading and the
market just after the turn of the century was Richard D. Wyckoff. Mr. Wyckoff was about 22 years
younger than Mr. Dow. Nonetheless, by the time Mr.

Dow published the first edition of The Wall Street

Journal,
Mr. Wyckoff was in his eleventh year on
Wall Street, having progressed from being a runner
to opening his own brokerage offme. He also developed as a writer and around 1907 launched a monthly
publication called The Ticker. This magazine was
later merged into The Magazine of Wall Street. By
that time, he had been studying the market for 20odd years and had become a proficient tape reader.
He wrote, arguably, the best book ever produced on
tape reading, in 1910. Using the pseudonym Rollo
Tape, Mr. Wyckoff wrote the insightful Studies in
Tape Reading.2 Responding to the criticism, the average man never makes a success of tape reading,
Mr. Wyckoff responded, Right you are! The average
man never makes a success of anything.
Similar to Mr. Dows book method (point and
figure), Mr. Wycoff, in the early 19OOs, constructed
from the tape an eighth-point chart of a stock. Instead
of recording Xs at each price level, he plotted the
cumulative volume at that price. An example is pictured in Exhibit One.
EXHIBIT ONE
(Used with Permission

of The Stock Market

Instifute)

Richard Wyckoff (The Analyst) originated what he called

a Volume Chart It was an adaptation
of what Charles H.
Dow had called the book method
wherein, instead of
plotting Xs, the cumulative
volume at each price was
entered. Below is an example from his 1910 book Studies
in Tape Reading below. Mr. Wyckoff noted, When made
to cover a days movement
in a stock, this chart is particularly valuable in showing the quantity of stock absorbed at
various levels.

Volume

Chart

In a 1912 address to the Finance Forum3 in New

York City, Mr. Wyckoff said, ...I was once a fundamentalist myself. No amount of study in the field of
statistics wiIl give one the slightest hint as to
Supreme Court decisions, Government prosecutions,
stock market object lessons, big shake outs, etc., all
of which can take place without fundamentals batting an eye. You can have all your fundamentals right
and draw wrong conclusions; or your conclusion may
be correct but one fundamental which you overlook
may upset all your calculations. Then, there are
unknown factors which nobody can analyze. These
are continually cropping up and nullifying all those
which are known....
This brings us up to the pivotal point in tape
reading, which is Supply and Demand. We all know
that this same principle governs all branches of trade,
whether manufacturing, railroading or dealing in any
of thousands of different commercial lines. We have
a picture of what happens on the floor of the Stock
Exchange, and it is faithfully recorded on the ticker
tape-the
best indicator of this Supply and Demand.
Over the next two decades, Mr. Wyckoff developed further insights with his studies of Supply and
Demand. In 1965, I acquired his two-volume, leather
bound study course which was copyrighted in the
1930s and was tutored by the late Bob Evans. Mr.
Wyckoffs course material was later revised and published into an updated course still offered by The
Stock Market Institute4
An example of an intraday Wyckoff Wave5 chart
is shown in Exhibit Two. Please note an added dimension to the customary price, volume, time data
- activity. Sixty years later, its rare to see such a
revealing picture of the anatomy of the market.
Some of the principles learned from the Wyckoff
material were incorporated into the computerized
tape studies that I began in 1968. These will be discussed later.
The surprise hit at the 1992 Annual Market
Technicians Association Seminar was the methodical, rational presentation of Rebekah Helzel, at that
time a currency trader for Bank of America, now a
proprietary trader for BA Securities. Ms. Helzel
exclusively used the Wyckoff Supply/Demand studies in her analysis and presentation, and credited
Dr. Henry 0. Prudenj for introducing her to the
Wyckoff methodologies.
Wyckoff Promotes Gann
W.D. Gann, another tape reader, trader and
teacher, who was posthumously awarded the 1983
MTA Annual Award, credited Richard Wyckoff with
making him famous in The Ticker magazine in 1909.7
In 1923, Mr. Gann published Truth of the Stock Tape.
Of all the books and courses Mr. Gann subsequently

MTA

JOURNAL

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11

EXHIBIT TWO
(Used with Permission

of The Stock Market

Included in his early 1930s course of instruction

was
The Wyckoff Wave Chart of Tape Readings.
To aid subscribers and students master the understanding
of Price
Movement,
Time and Comparative
Lifting Power or Pressure, Volume and the Intensity of Action (Activity) these
significant
figures were published daily.
The only explanation
which would not be obvious to the
technician would be activity. The intensity of the trading
is indicated by the small figures in Column 7 of the table
and by the two irregular dotted lines which appear in the
chart, running along, one above and the other below the
solid line which represents the price path. The markets relative activity, that is, the pace of trading, is reflected in the
size of the index numbers recorded in the table (Column 7)
which are proportional
to the change in activity. Thus, an
index number of 1 or 2 reflects dullness; a unit of 3 to 4,
moderately
active trading; and 6 to 7, high activity. In extremely active markets, when the tape is late, the activity
index may rise to as high as 10 or more.

Institute)

By casually (not mathematically)

comparing the activity with the volume and duration of the buying and selling
waves, we are able to judge whether the supply or demand
is of good or poor quality. For example, suppose we have
two buying waves each of 10 minutes duration and each
showing a volume of 100,000
shares. And suppose that
the activity index registers 5 on the first, but only 3 on the
second wave. Obviously, demand must be of poorer quality
on the first wave than on the second because, while the
market is more active on wave number one, since time and
volume are the same, this greater activity can be accounted
for only by trading in smaller lots as compared with wave
number two.
...it should be noted that the activity index has no
relationship
to the price movement
as recorded in the Wave
Chart table, and it is only indirectly related to the time and
volume figures because it represents the rate at which orders are flowing into the market, not a ratio between time
and volume.
ACTIvpcy

opming. . . . . . . 345
1

10:20

20

347

+2

lOA0

20

344;

- 2&

65

11:oo

20

3474

+2)

73

11:20

20

34G

-4

55

l2:oo

40

3473

135

60

3454

-2

120

1:OO

MTA

JOURNAL

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1995

3f

1:30

30

3@

+*

72

2f

l&5

15

347t

-4

i3

14

2:oo

15

3531

+6t

85

St

10

2:15

15

3521

- 1

53

11

2~50

35

3w

+ 7i

597

12

3:cu

10

359:

-4

so

rote, I found this book to be among the most lucid.

I it Mr. Gann lists the essential qualifications for
ecoming a successful tape reader: Patience, Nerve,
knowledge, Health and Rest. He follows with his
Rules for Successful Trading: Capital; Limit Risk;
lont Overtrade-the
Greatest Evil; Never Let a
rofit Run into a Loss; Dont Buck the Trend; When
I Doubt, Get Out; Trade in Active Stocks; Distribte Risk Equally; Dont Fix a Price Or Point to Buy
nd Sell; Accumulate a Surplus, Dont Buy Stocks
1st Because They Pay Dividends Nor Sell Them
ecause They Do Not.8
Mr. Gann developed many interesting concepts
Id made some very significant contributions to the
-t of technical analysis. I am privileged to have known

12

lh

for several years a financier, Mr. W Ring Grant, Sr.,

who worked with Mr. Gann at the peak of his success
in New York. Mr. Gann dedicated some of his books
to Mr. Grants uncle, Clarence Kirven. When Mr.
Kirven died, Ring Grant, Jr., knowing of my interest in the works of Mr. Gann, loaned me Mr. Kirvens
library His father subsequently gave me his large
book of hand-drawn graphs that he used when
working with Mr. Gann. Mr. Grant was successful in
the commodity markets and became a member of the
Chicago Board of Trade and New Orleans Cotton Exchange. Now 89, he most vividly recalls the Gann
Circle Graph and the value of squaring price and
time.g Mr. Grant went on to become a highly
successful entrepreneur and philanthropist,
unlike

r
Mr. Gann, who, in spite of the promotional hype of
his taking 50 million dollars from the market, did
not leave a large estate. lo In recent years, there have
been countless promotion pieces published, some
even claiming to have uncovered the Master Time
Factor. In my opinion, unfortunate exaggerated claims
have tended to taint an otherwise brilliant legacy of
analytical discoveries made by Gann.
Substituting

Pros

for

Pools

Several books have been published with an emphasis on the ticker tape. I shall reference three. The
first, an often quoted book, is Humphrey Neills 1931
Tape Readings and Market Tactics. It became very
popular with the original editions having five printings and reprint editions in 1959 and 1970. In the
Foreword to the 1959 edition, Mr. Neil1 wrote, I
suggest you mentally read pros instead of pools
and operator in place of pool operations. There
are no pools operating in the markets today.. .pools
manipulating prices is [sic] taboo under the Securities & Exchange Act of the mid-1930s. In his Foreword to the 1970 edition, Mr. Neil1 mentioned an
earlier project with Simon & Schuster in which they
used his book in connection with a reprint of Gerald
M. Loebs 1937 book, The Battle for Investment
Survival.
Mr. Loeb has been labeled The Wizard of Wall
Street. In his book he states, In my opinion, far
and away the most important thing to master in Wall
Street is the tape. It is possible to see only the tape,
and nothing else, and make a lot of money. It is a
safety valve and automatic check on everything you
do if you understand how to read it. My main point
is to develop a realistic attitude; 99.99% and more of
those who try to deal in Wall Street think they are
right and the tape is wrong. Stocks that are high
and going higher are a good buy. Stocks that are
cheap and growing cheaper dont interest me from
a buying angle.
The third book is another little classic on tape
reading, Ticker Technique by Orline D. Foster, which
was written in 1935 and subsequently revised and
edited by Dr. Robert Peersons, Jr. in 1965. The revised edition added material by Don Worden and
Herbert Liesner. Much of the material added by Mr.
Worden had previously been published in the 1963
edition of Encyclopedia of Stock Market Techniques.
FITCH

SHEETS

In the Foreword to the 1970 edition of his book,

Mr. Neil1 mentions the availability of daily records
of consecutive trades published by Francis Emory
Fitch-and
in this way one may become a relaxed
arm-chair tape reader and student of market tactics.
In his book sixty years earlier, Richard Wyckoff had

mentioned the Fitch sheets. They are still available

today - in printed form from 1930 and on computer
readable tape from 1968.12 For decades the New York
Stock Exchange had made the data available to Fitch
for processing and, in turn, received copies of the
tabular listings. The Exchange now offers a wide
variety of data services through its Market Data
Products13 division, including all trades and quotes
from all U. S. Exchanges and NASDAQ.
Mr. Neil1 also mentioned the tape-reading data
and services of 1994s recipient of the MTA Annual
Award, Don Worden, developer of the $100,000
Index. Mr. Worden had tabulated every NYSE transaction of 1,000 shares or larger since 1957. In 1962,
he began devoting full time to his stock market studies and published The Worden Tape Reading Studies. In a 1963 a.rticle14 he felt the ultimate perspective of price moves was gained from the point and
figure chart, but for a pure and revealing picture of
volume - nothing is so revealing as a tabulation of
large blocks. He, too, had referenced the daily lists
of transactions published by Francis Emory Fitch,
Inc., but noted, bringing these transactions into a
summarized enough form so that they can be used is
a staggering job. By the mid-1960s, Mr. Wordens
data were computed by the Quotron Computer Center. Several years ago Mr. Worden discontinued the
tape studies. When I asked him why in 1994, he said,
It doesnt work anymore. Our probes into the
advances of the ticker feed discussed later may shed
some light on this observation.
More

Tips

on Tape

Reading

Some insightful tips from the big traders regarding tape readings were included in the expanded
1964 edition of The Sophisticated
Investor by Burton Crane and Sylvia Crane Eisenlohr.15 A couple of
those tips: James C. Kellogg III (Spear, Leeds &
Kellogg and former Chairman of the NYSE) is quoted
as saying, when he trades in stocks other than those
in which he specializes, he is using the tape as a signal. In Kelloggs words, Im more interested in
finding stocks that have values, stocks that should
have gone up but didnt. However, I dont want to
buy them if nobody else is interested in them, so I
wait until the tape tells me that volume is developing and the price is rising. Then I buy. Mr. Kellogg
also said, Dont buy the sympathy stock.
William M. Meehan, a leading specialist at the
time, in warning about relying on maxims, is quoted
as saying, Never sell a dull tape. Maybe a thing like
that works nine times, but the one time in ten that
it works in reverse is apt to be a violent surprise. I
once had a friend who used to work by rules such as
that. He wasnt hurt much by 1929 or 1937 but the
averages caught up with him in 1938 and 1939. Why?

MTA

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1995

13

Because in 30-odd years in the market, he had never

seen stocks go down with volume declining every day.
To him, this was a bullish signal. So he bought something at 25 and kept buying as prices fell. They picked
up the pieces of his fortune when it hit 11. Generally
speaking, however, watch for a stock that goes up on
increasing volume - especially, watch for a stock
that rises on bad news.
History of the Ticker
On November 151867, nine years before Alexander Graham Bells first words were carried by
telephone, telegraph operator Edward A. Calahan
revolutionized the securities and commodities industries by transmitting last sale prices direct from the
New York Stock Exchange to a brokerage firm. This
new reporting system replaced pad shovers, messengers who ran from office to office with handwritten trading sheets. Sixteen years later Thomas
Edisons famous glass domed ticker, which would
become the standard for almost a half-century, was
unveiled. In 1925, a 285 character per minute (cpm)
version was introduced. There were almost 10,000
of these tickers in operation in 1929. Beginning September 2, 1930, the 500 cpm black box almost
doubled quotation speeds. This became the standard
for the next 34 years, until transmission speeds
advanced up to 900 cpm, when the new high speed
ticker developed for the Exchange by the Teletype
Corporation
began transmitting
prices. These
machines changed speeds automatically to keep pace
with the activity, printing at 500, 600, 700, 800 or
900 characters per minute. This variable speed clatter reflected tone changes on the floor. The new
high speed ticker was capable of handling volume of
up to ten million shares without a tape delay, which
was over twice the average daily volume (4.9 million
shares) at the time.
The consolidated tape was introduced in 1975.
There is no longer a NYSE-only tape. All transactions in NYSE listed stocks from the Intermarket
Trading Systems (ITS) participating exchanges and
broker-dealer participants in NASD/CAES (Computer Assisted Execution System) are transmitted
on Network A.
Into the 1960s and early 197Os, it was common
to see traders and analysts scanning the paper ribbon. I employed a clerk to copy every price in a
selected group of stocks until 1968, when my first
computer, a DEC PDP 81, arrived. It was an ordeal
getting required clearance to connect to the ticker
feed, to say nothing of developing the machine language programming required for it to read the tape.
Even Dow Jones & Company calculated its hourly
averages by hand until 1963.
This high speed ticker wasnt fast enough, and

14

MTA

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1995

on January 19, 1976, a new circuit began transmitting market data up to 40 times faster. Trans-Lux
no longer leases them, but Marianne Johnson,16 who
was product manager for the 900 personal ticker,
says there are only a smattering of them still around
which were purchased and are privately maintained.
However, there are many Trans-Lux LED Jet displays scrolling across the walls of brokerage offices
and on exchange floors.
MTA member Jim Yates, former President of
Bridge Data and now head of Affinity Plus, Inc.,17
which saves on optical discs over a million transactions per day (every trade, every market in North
America), calls the visual moving ticker obsolete
because it is impossible for it to remain current. He
compares it to commodity tickers which give indications of current markets by transmitting last prices,
not every trade. In fast market periods, entries are
entered on a best efforts basis.
The Computer Era
A large IBM computer complex was installed by
the NYSE in late 1964. In March 1965, fully automated quotations became available as a result. On
December 20,1966, transmission of trade and quote
data from the floor became fully automated. In 1972,
the New York and American Stock Exchanges joined
forces to form The Securities Industry Automation
Corporation WAC) to provide computer services to
the entire industry SIACs software controls commum&ions, safe-storage, queuing and recovery The
NYSE reports that with its Common Software program, it has established an up-time record of 99.99%.
There were over 49 million trades in 1994 on
the NYSE alone. Accurate tape reading today requires a computer receiving data on the high speed
line. However, it is important that the analyst/trader
be aware of the speed and capacity of the vendors
processing and forwarding equipment that feeds the
users quotation device or computer. Currently, there
are over 100 market data vendors connected to the
Consolidated Tape. Simply using Quotrons last sale
price as a standard, I have timed some highly advertised systems prices and quotes running several
minutes behind in periods of heavy activity
National
Market System
In the historical The New York Stock Exchange:
The first 200 Years,8 author Richard Blodgett and
archivist Steven Wheeler termed the Securities Act
Amendments of 1975 the most important federal
securities legislation since the 1930s. It mandated
a National Market System. The Inter-market Trading System (ITS) began limited operation in 1978,
became fully operational in 1982, electronically linking eight exchanges and the NASDKAES.

On the ITS all participating markets now compete for the buy and sell orders through an electronic
interface with SIACs host systems. The result has
been an enormous investment in technology, which
in turn has further revolutionized the industry. The
Consolidated Quote System employed by participating exchanges and the NASD reflects the highest bid
and lowest offer. The ITS generates quotes in which
NASD/CAES registered market makers can execute
19c-3 (defined elsewhere in this report) trades. In
the ITS plan, when a market (or doable limit) order
arrives to a market with an inferior quote, the market maker must send through ITS a commitment to
trade with the best quote generator, or match the
quote. Otherwise, a trade through complaint may

be registered within five minutes, if it is other than

100 shares or not a regular-way trade. Each participant is responsible for watching for the best ITS
quote because these orders are not automatically
routed. A public customer may expect to receive a
price as good as the best quote, but many orders are
not exposed to the auction market where there might
be price improvement.
Dot and Superdot
In 1976, the New York Stock Exchange introduced DOT - the Designated Order Turnaround for market orders of fewer than 200 shares and limit
orders of 100 shares or less. From the Common Message Switch (CMS - see Exhibit Three) these orders
-

EXHIBIT THREE
(Used with Permission

of The Stock Market Institute)

NYSE TRADING SYSTEMS

Common

Message

Switch

*Provides
reliable communications
connections
and control between member firms and SIAC host systems.

NYSE and AMEX. Formats

l

*Supports over 450 circuits ranging from 1,200 to 19.200

baud, handling a variety of communications
protocols.
l Receives,
edits and validates equity and options orders for

Handles

*Provides
analysis

queuing,

associated

flow control

daily executed
databases.

trade

reports.

and priority
input

routing.

to comparison

and

MTA

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15

went to DOT, which cataloged them, and sent them

on to the Post Support System (PSS) and then on to
the proper trading location. There have been numerous improvements through the years, and the system
is now known as SuperDOT. In the SuperDOT
system, round-lot executions are not automatic, they
are exposed to the crowd. The order may be executed
by the specialist with a broker in the crowd or with
the current quote, or he may stop the order, When
stopped, the order is guaranteed that price if abetter price is not obtained within thirty minutes, unless
the specialist extends the time. I concluded from a
published 1992 study that, at that time, 16 percent
of post-opening SuperDOT stopped orders received
price improvement.
SuperDOT now has projected capacity to handle
in excess of a 1 l/4 billion-share day, more than twice
the record of October 20, 1987, without significant
communication delays. Its current order size restrictions are 30,099 shares for market orders, and 99,999
shares for limit orders. The Individual
Investor
Express Delivery Service was introduced in 1988
to give priority to orders of less than 2,100 shares.
The Exchange reports that 98% of orders routed
to SuperDOT are executed and reported back within
less than half a minute. In 1994, 85% of the orders
originating from member firm trading desks and
their customers reached the trading floor electronitally through the Exchanges SuperDOT system.
While some ITS participants
have excellent
reporting speeds for transactions in eligible securities to SIAC, for dissemination on the Consolidated
Tape, analysts should be aware of the rules. The Consolidated Tape Association Plan requires each participant to only report last sale data as promptly as
possible and to ensure that, under normal conditions, not less than 90 percent of such last sale data
are reported within 90 seconds after execution.
Therefore, there is no assurance that prices flowing
in from multiple markets are being viewed in the
time sequence in which the trade occurred. Thus, I
reason that money flow, tick volume and other measures, such as changes for point and figure charts
based upon chronological tape prints from the Consolidated Tape, are subject to question. Hans R. Stoll,
Director of the Financial Markets Research Center
at Vanderbilt University, is quoted as saying that
there is a lack of adherence to the go-second rule.
There are situations where the trades are coming
hot and heavy, and theyre not getting reported.1g
It should be noted that another newer rule, 19c-3,
from the Securities Acts Amendments of 1975, permits Exchange members to make dealer markets in
securities issued after that time. Roughly half the
NYSE listings are eligible for such inside trading.
Most data display products I have investigated

16

MTA JOURNAL

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1995

default to the Consolidated Tape, although some

afford the ability to select a specific market. For my
computerized tape reading studies, only NYSE prints
are preferred, although incorrect sequencing of trade
and quote data from the Exchange sometimes occurs,
too. A study of the Equity Consolidated Audit Trade
File (CAUD)20 placed the overall accuracy at approximately 98 percent.
There are three ways trades are reported from
the Exchange: The Display Book reporting of exclusively SuperDOT orders is effected automatically
with the execution report; non-exclusive SuperDOT
trades are entered using the Display Book keyboard
by the specialists clerk; trades occurring in the
crowd are entered on mark sense cards prepared
by a NYSE floor reporter who stands by the specialist. In a study four years ago, the median print delay
times were: 6 seconds, 14 seconds and 16 seconds,
respectively. As the volume of transactions
to
SuperDOT has continued, it is very likely the overall
delay figures are now even less. For full year 1994,
roughly 65% of the trades were reported to CTS
through the Display Book. Over the same time period,
almost all (98%) of the quotes were updated by the
Display Book.
Dirk vanden Heuvel, managing editor of Market
Chart~,~~ a leading source for point and figure charts,
shares my preference for primary market prints only
on its graphs. They contract with Muller Data Corp. to
screen the transaction tapes for the required changes.
Modern

Pioneer

As mentioned earlier, I began computerized tape

reading in 1968 on 100 issues. From this group a
Growth Stock Index of 13 blue chips in the Nifty
Fifty was constructed. Exhibit Four has graphs from
that era that show a Force Line beneath the index.
This line was the transaction volume algebraically
summed according to up, down or zero tick. The divergence indications are self explanatory.
Studies of groupings and sectors continue to hold
great interest for me. A four year surge in new listings, which saw the number of companies grow 587
to 2,361 at the end of 1994, is partly attributable to
the growth in closed-end investment company shares.
When these are combined with the listings of preferred shares, rights, warrants and certain foreign
shares, summary statistics from all trades are not
an accurate picture of what is happening in our stock
market. Distortions in the advance-decline line have
similarly resulted from these inclusions, prompting
some, such as Paul F Desmond of Lowry Reports, to
take out these shares. MTA Board Member Phil Roth,
as well as Lazlo Birinyiz2 and others, maintain an
A-D Line using only the components in the S&P
500 index.

EXHIBIT FOUR
This index of mature growth stocks was maintained
from
1968 and included Avon, Coca Cola, Control Data, Disney,
Hewlett-Packard,
IBM, Johnson &Johnson,
Minnesota
Mining, Merck, Northwest Airlines, Polaroid, Texas Instruments
and Xerox. There were frequent divergences in price levels
between it and the S&P 500 index, as shown below.
l/73-10/74

ioncw75

s&P

-50%

+54%

5n59n5
-15%

9n57n6
+31%

7nwt79
-19%

GSI

-62%

+69%

-24%

+37%

-29%

Two graphs follow. The first illustrates

divergences
c
significance
to the shorter time frame analyst. The seconl
highlights
the Major Alerts created by pronounced
diver
gences between the Force Line and Price and are clear1
marked.
As noted in the text, the Force Line is the algebrai
sum of up/down transactions
computed
from the NY.S
ticker.

13 Growth Stock Index

illustrating

1..

_i

Force Line/Price

Divergences

ALL DIVERGENCIES

It Aint Necessarily
So
When I went to the CBOE as a market maker, it
became necessary to rely on remote interrogation of
a then popular independent main frame service for
my trade-by-trade data Having been so close to transaction data for years, I began to sense there must be
some glitches in their software. I was shocked that
such a major service could have been successfully
offering its services to institutions, for high fees, for
several years without perfected programs. Management of that firm could not believe it either, but when
I proved to them there were problems, part of the
amicable settlement was for me to consult them on
their correction. One key problem was as basic as
the programs failing to properly handle special
trades (OPENED,
SOLD, CANCEL,
CORRECT,
CASH
and NEXT DAY SETTLEMENTS,
etc.). Examples are
shown in Exhibit Five, where the original paper tape
print was compared to the summary printout. One
scan totally ignored the opening transaction! By the

MAJOR DIViRGENCIES

way, four years ago the NOSE began to phase in new

procedures that make available order-by-order components of opening trades and intraday bunched
trades that are processed through SuperDOT.
We Are Not Alone in Our Studies
Academic interests in transactional
data are
growing.23 Among the products and services the
NYSE makes available through its Market Data
Products division for purposes of academic research are CD-ROM files with detailed quote and
transaction data from the Consolidated Tape. These
data are available by subscription beginning January, 1993, with each TAQ (Trade and Quote) CD containing every trade and quote for a month on all
NYSE, AMEX and NASDAQ NMS stocks. New TAQ
releases are published monthly with about a four
week lag. The source code was developed on Microsoft
Fortran version 5.1, and may be modified, recompiled,
and distributed for use on any CPU platform.

MTA

JOURNAL

/ FALL

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1995

17

r
., c

it;.

2
.

2-t
24
24
24
24

1G

24

ii
2

rri
114

-.
..&
..
a./
,, -.

Programs that do not properly read and adjust

for special trades are valueless.
lo:51
10:34

_ _, ,

iz

1197

1,L

238

l/4

.;

10:34

In the top example, an Opening transaction

report was in error. The correction was not
properly noted as evidenced by the end of day
time and sales.

.. -

:sy

.:

-.f

::w

..
i :~,$g~.$~~~~;~~:~;
:2 ._ Q;-.g*~
0.. py :rug: i I

18

MTA

JOURNAL

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1995

y)
9

--

-.
-cl*

Similarly, the IBM SOLD trade was not noted

--tvery P&F graph of l/2 point or less will be wrong
to say nothing of the summary tic measures.

The bottom example again shows a SLD trade

in EK. The P&F graph is, therefore, in error.

EXHIBIT FIVE
(continued)

10:44
10:44
10:44
10:45
lo:46
lo:46
10:47

511
20
2
1
1

lo:48
10:40
10:49

10:49
10:49

10:49

1
2

10:47

1o:so
10:!51
1o:s1

81
81
81
W
3/

HIGH
l.
2
3
4
7

281
291
295
289
290

l/4

OO-

t
OCLOSE

l/.Z.gBB

l/2

2$6

iBi4
3ATE
3
s
7 :2 5
..-,;
rr
-a
;,

i
z
z
4

.-a

This IBM OPD trade of 51,400

shares
was incorrectly eliminated.
You can see
how the summary data on the two scans
didnt match for Aug. 3. The difference is
51,400, of course.

o-

279,. l/8
..29f
f/2
l/2 .285 ii2

279
279
285
2a4
286

S/8
l/2

o-

l/4

LOU
S/8
l/2

.NT
ot
ooO-

3/4 314
314
314
l/2
l/2

l/4
.

294 l/4
294 l/J
294
294 l/a.
294
294 -

OATE
i9/
7.W
i8/
7:
.:C.-

29S*
295
294
294
294
294
294
294
294
294
294

UOL #XACT

a'553
:i9;47
2405

594
799
403

1610

417

566

2194

300

435

;LOY
279.,00
279.00
285.50
2B4.SO
286.00

HIGH

320
423
452

ZSX(Jp/~&;<=ii
UP
iGUN

281.63
291.50
295.00
289.63
290.20

-230
-270
-384
-244
-434

t&O$E
2.79.13
291.50
285.50
288.50
286.00

--&z;;u
;;;;..ilr
DCUN
.IET

?iET
364
529
19
322
21

VOL
1553
1747
2405
1610
2194

iOd9

-434

:a5

:522
913
1045
1393

-425
-981
-56;

-801

I397
&
.,a0
,?2

UP
1069
1522
910

DOW
404
425
14:s

-5s;

1045

565

J90

1393

aOi

NET
53s
i397

592

In the example
below, the volumes for June 14, 1977, do not match. What is correct,
26,445,OOO
or 25,359,000?
In this case, the former was the correct total volume and the
latter was the volume of common stocks only.

MARKET

VOLUME
NYSE
AMEX
NYSE-C
NYSE-I
AHEX-C

DATE

77
77
77
77
77

6 13
6 14
6 15
6 16
6-f

INFORMATION

FOR

VOLUHE

26445000
2523000
24756000
575000
2220000

HIGH

53.94
54.42
54.42
54.56
54.64

77/

--.

6/14

10 MA
21051800
2464800
20042800
495900
2157300

LOW

53.94
54.42
54.42
54.56
54.64

i
/

30 MA
20602533
2459300
19909433
513700
2173767

CLOSE

VOL

UP

DOWN

53.94
54.42
54.42
54.56
54.64

20257
w59
22618
24296
21928

11480
17018
12142
13879
12751

8777
8341
10471
10417
9177

MTA

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86771676
3462
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/ FALL

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19

The Exchange Survives

It occurs to me that the New York Stock Exchange is glad for researchers to delve into these data
as it becomes obvious what an overall excellent comparative result they are getting from their monumental investments in new technologies. Many can
recall the intense rivalries in the late 1960s and early
1970s that prompted an article in Institutional
Investor titled, Can the New York Stock Exchange Survive?% What the magazine later referred to as the
structural chaos in which the securities industry is
presently enmeshed, together with the market cond&ions in the 1973-1974 period, contributed to a bear
market in NYSE membership prices. NYSE seat
prices bottomed at $35,000 in 1977, as low as they
had been since 1943. Apparently the Exchanges energetic attempt to shift to offense, which was the
subject of yet another article, was successful, as seat
prices recovered to a high of $1,150,000 ten years
later, and volume has continued to grow year after
year. On that infamous day in 1987, the days volume
exceeded the entire years volume of thirty years
earlier.
Looking Ahead
I am excited about the future as speed and accuracy of the trade/quote data continue to improve. Exchange officials tell me that in the last twelve years
the NYSE has invested over a billion dollars in new
technology There are over 5,000 electronic devices
on the NYSE floor, and last August the Exchange
announced2j another $125 million system of new
computers to facilitate even more speedy and accurate trading. Since 1988, the Exchangez6 has been
able to reduce the number of support personnel from
800 to 500. That trend is expected to continue as its
140 runners will be replaced by cellular telephones
and hand-held computers that allow brokers to receive orders and to report trades while remaining in
the trading crowd.
Research
For some time now, we have been able to generate good measures of current from the NYSE
common stock data. The graph shown as Exhibit Six
reveals measures developed over 20 years ago and
included in my 1978 copyrighted study, Transactional
Data Analysis, Although these measures are very
straightforward
in revealing why the averages are
moving as they are, as far as I know they are unique
in that I havent seen or heard of them from any
other source. The upper line is THE AVERAGE VOLUME PER TRADE ON PRICE ADVANCES; the lower
line is THE AVERAGE VOLUME PER TRADE ON
PRICE DECLINES. Please note how, on the secondary reaction following the 1974 low of the deepest

20

MTA

JOURNAL

i FALL-WINTER

1995

bear market in our (pre-retirement

age) lifetime,
the average trade marking prices higher was expanding in size as the average trade on price concessions
was diminishing.
My common sense reasoning is
that this is what one would expect to happen if a
strong bull move were in its developing stages. But
only with such a measure can we really know what
and how they are doing. We learned long ago, its
not what theyre saying, but what theyre doing
thats important!
Using the NYSE TAQ data, we can develop programs to achieve a measure of pressure based upon
the trend of data from where trades are executed
within the bid/ask spread. However, as explained
earlier with the last sale entries, quote entries can
be out of sequence with the trade. Quotes are on a
separate feed and may be updated prior to the last
sales being printed. Another measure I am thinking about is the amount of cumulative time (on a
transaction basis) that issues remain on plus-ticks
and/or plus tick-bid. Come to think of it, this is not
very different from what Messrs. Dow and Wyckoff
were working on about around a century ago - Supply and Demand! But, instead of studying 700 daily
trades on the New York Stock Exchange, our computers must screen 195,000.27 Yet, the principles
remain the same!
Conclusions
It would be a mistake for the serious student of
trading and investing to ignore stock and commodity market writings dating back as far as a century
by assuming they are irrelevant to todays markets,
Many changes have evolved with advancing technology in the 128-year history of the ticker, but there
are still some valuable insights to be learned from
the market legends.
Neither should one be satisfied that there is no
room left for analytical discovery by assuming that
we have it all with todays colorful data displays.
There remains significant room for improvement, not
only from the ticker, through faster data collection
and re-transmission by the vendors, but to the ticker
from the originating exchange and NASDAQ. This
report has revealed that even the NYSE, which is
the standard by which others have been measured,
is not yet perfect in the sequential reporting of last
sale prices and quotations.
Readers should now more fully understand how
easily data can be flawed: last sales may not be
reported in the sequence in which the trade actually
occurred, and quotations may be updated before a
transaction which prompted the update is disseminated. Such facts are important not only to the transactional data analyst but even to a public customer
who, when watching for a specific transaction report,

STANDARD

& POORS WEEKLY RANGE INTRA-DAY

HIGH LOW

1973-1978

t t t
--

111

EXHIBIT SIX
Hales Average Size Trade Indicator
The top line is the Average Volume Per Trade on Price Advances.
on Price Declines. This graph covers a five year period including

The lower line is the Average Volume

the major bear market low in 1974.

Per Trade

may erroneously think that an order was not filled

when it appeared to be entitled, or that the price
was out of line with the price/quote displayed at the
reported time of the trade. It has bean shown that
the timeliness and accuracy of the data feed is of great
importance and that there are significant differences
in reporting efficiencies among various vendors.
Scores of research papers have been published
by academics in the past few years using the transactional data obtained from the Exchanges Market
Data Products Division and the Institute for the
Study of Security Markets. With the cooperation of
the NYSE, the ISSM has available price and volume
data for every trade and quote on the NYSE and
AMEX from 1983 and NASDAQ from 1990 through
1992, time stamped to the nearest second. These data
have been the source for several highly publicized
articles, some critical, especially those relating to the
NASDAQ market. The debate caused by several of
these studies may lead to some of the desired improvements mentioned earlier.
Among the many market professionals with
whom Ive spoken in preparing this report, I was
surprised at the small number of analysts who were
aware of the availability of these detailed historical
trade and quote data files. It appears the academic
community has devoted much more research effort
in their use than have professional market analysts.
I continue to be amazed that with all the computer power involved in driving our display terminals, many vendors are duplicating each others output. I am hopeful that this report will stimulate some
to review the situation and to not only realize the
importance of correct, sequential trade reporting, but
to incorporate new ways to manage the data in the
development of more accurate studies of supply and
demand.
REFERENCES
1. A Treasury of Wall Street Wisdom, edited by H.D. Schultz &
S. Coslo. Investors
Press, Inc., Palisades Park, NJ, 1966 Charles
H. Dow: A Cornerstone
Name. pp. 3-19.
2. Studies in Tape Reading, Roll0 Tape, (Richard D. Wyckoff).
No Date/Copyright
Listed. The Copies Reprinted
by: Fraser
Management
Associates,
Burlington,
VT.
3. The Magazine
of Wall Street (Including
The Ticker
and
Inuestment Digest), Vol. 9, No. 5, March, 1912, Why the Tape Is
a Better Guide Than the News or the Fundamentals,
Richard
D. Wyckoff, pp. 197-201,249-253.
4. Stock Market
Institute,
Phoenix,
AZ. Craig Schroeder,
telephone (602) 942-5581.
5. The Richard D. Wyckoff Method of Trading and Investing
in
Stocks, A Course of Instruction
in Stock Market Science and
Techniques,
Richard D. Wyckoff,
1931.
6. MTA Board Member Dr. Henry 0. Pruden is Distinguished
Visiting Professor
in the School of Finance and Economics
at
Golden Gate University,
San Francisco,
CA.
7. What Fits A Man to Write As an Authority,
Promotion Piece,
by W.D. Gann, p. 9.

22

MTA

JOURNAL

/ FALL -WINTER

1995

8. Truth of the Stock Tape, W.D. Gann, Financial

Guardian
Publishing
Co., (1923); Ed Lambert (1941); Billy Jones (1976).
9. My Life Story, W King Grant, Sr. Privately
Published
for
Family, (1973).
10. Ed Lambert
was a principal in Lambert-Gann
Publishing
Co. I had several conversations
with him in the early 1970s
regardinghlr.
Gann. He offered the copyrights to all the material
Lambert-Gann
owned for a relatively nominal sum. A couple of
years later I learned that they had been purchased by Billy Jones,
who has since reissued much of the material.
11. Tape Readings and Market Tactics, Humphrey
B. Neil, B.C.
Forbes Publishing
Company (19311, Humphrey
B. Neil (1959)
and (1970) pp. xiii, xvii, xxi.
12. Francis Emory Fitch, Inc., Alan Spataro, VP (212) 619-3800.
13. NYSE, Inc., Market Data Products
(212) 656-3800, 11 Wall
Street - 21st Floor, New York, NY 10269-0108.
14. Encyclopedia
of Stock Market Techniques, Investors
Intelligence, Inc., Larchmont,
NY (1963) p. 635.
15. The Sophisticated
Znuestor,
Burton
Crane. Revised and
expanded by Sylvia Crane Eisenlohr,
Simon and Shuster, New
York (1964) pp. 63-74.
16. Ellen Pendergast,
Assistant
VP Marketing,
describes
Marianne
Johnson
as Trans-Luxs
resident
ticker
expert.
Trans-Lux
Corp. (203) 853-4321 Norwalk,
CT.
17. James M. Yates, Affinity
Plus, Inc., 2092 Mason Road, St.
Louis, MO 63131.
18. The New York Stock Exchange: The First 200 Years, NYSE
(1992).
19. The Wall Street Journal,
Little Guy Lost: For Individual
Investors,
Getting a Good Price in Securities Markets is a Tough
Task. November
4,1994, p. A4.
20. An Audit Trail File is found on the TORQ database of the
NYSE.
21. Market Charts, Inc., 10 Hanover Sq. -20th
Floor, New York,
NY 10005. Muller Data Corp., Div. Thomson
Corp. - Bob
Winters (212) 807-3760.
22. I spoke with Mr. Roth; Mr. Birinyis
statement
is found in
Forbes, November
21, 1994, p. 243.
23. NYSE Working
Paper #93-O. Joel Hasbrouck,
George
Sofianos and Deborah Sosebee.
24. Institz&ionalZnucstor-Tenth Anniversary
Edition, March 1977.
1970-Can
the New York Stock Exchange Survive? p. 129.
1973--The
Big Board Takes the Offensive,
p. 199. Institutional
Investor
Systems, Inc., 488 Madison Avenue, New York 10022.
25. Associated
Press-New
York. August 18, 1994, *Big Board
Getting Electronic Boost to Make Stock Trading More Efficient.
26. The Wall Street Journal, Technology
Outruns the Runners
On New York Stock Exchange
August 19,1994.
27. The Official Reported Stock Volume from the NYSE in 1994
was 73,420,401,235.
There were 49,102,934 trades for a daily
average of 194,853. Average shares per sale: 1,495. Warrant
volume totaled 100,936,860 in 1994.
OTHERREFERENCES
New York Stock Exchange Fact Books (1965 through 1995). This
is an invaluable source for data, and has been used as a reference
throughout
the article.
New York Stock Exchange Systems and Trading Procedures,
Hasbrouck,
Sotianos and Sosebee. Draft 1.2 (April 27,1993).
Sam Hale is senior technical analyst for the Futures
and Index Options Department 0fA.G. Edwards & Sons,
Inc. He produces daily comments and forecasts on stock
indexes, treasury
bond and soybean futures. Prior to
Edwards,
he was affiliated with another major member firm; a CBOE Market Maker; consultant
to other
market makers and a CBOE member firm, as well as
heading a NASD member firm for three years.