| ATAA Blast! Newsletter – March 2024 #166 | Dear ~~first_name~~
Welcome to the second 2024 edition of the ATAA Blast! Newsletter - March 2024.
Last month we asked you to send us feedback about the ATAA monthly newsletter email via a survey, and 27 people responded with some really great feedback. A summary of the feedback is included below in the "Blast! News Feedback Survey..." section. It is really worth a read. But always feel free to send us more feedback.
In this edition of the ATAA Blast! newsletter you can find:
- Information about the feedback from the recent Blast! News Feedback Survey.
- ATAA National President's Report.
- ATAA website update - showcasing some really great chapter presentation video recordings.
- National Board Updates from: Marketing Working Group, Conference Working Group.
- Invitation for ATAA FX Traders to hook-up and compare notes.
- Our new RealTest Coders (online) Workshop - for users of RealTest software.
- Updates from the ATAA chapters: Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Sydney.
- IFTA Update: IFTA 2024 Conference, and IFTA 2024 Journal download.
- Benefits for ATAA members.
With our new ATAA website last year (using the ClubExpress web facility), we can more easily create and send correspondence such as these monthly email newsletters to targeted recipients, plus easily prepare and analyse surveys, and many other things. We are still experimenting with these features, including the basics within these Blast! newsletters, so we are hopeful that the layout and formatting works for you - even so, there might still be some gremlins, so if you find one, please let us know.
As the national Marketing Director, I am including key marketing phrases in this Blast!, including the ATAA Tag line in blue below, and the ATAA Elevator Pitch also in blue at the bottom of this email.
We do hope you find this Blast! newsletter useful and interesting reading; but do feel free to tell us what you really think, and how we can improve it.
Robert B Brain
Blast! Newsletter Editor
ATAA Marketing Director
(and ATAA Life Member)
| The ATAA is the knowledge network
for successfully using technical analysis
in financial market trading and investing
| Blast! News Feedback Survey – Thank you for your opinions and feedback
The ATAA has been producing a monthly newsletter for many years. Over that time it has had many editors, and the style, appearance and content has changed quite a lot. Last month we asked you for your feedback about this newsletter, and whether it should continue and in what form. A summary of the feedback and results is included below, and a more detailed 3-page Executive Overview document is available to download here: Blast 2024 Executive Summary.
From 27 respondents the following very useful feedback was received:
- Q2 – Would you like to receive these emails periodically? – Yes = 27
- Q3 – How often would you like to receive these? – Monthly = 19, Fortnightly = 1, plus several comments.
- Q4 – Should we include a message/update from the National President? – Yes = 24
- Q5 – Should we include an update from IFTA? – Yes = 25
- Q6 – Should we include a technical analysis article? – Yes = 24 [Scheduled to be included next month]
- Q7 – Should we include updates from the ATAA Chapters? – Yes = 25
- Q8 – Any further comments or suggestions? – There were several of these (see details in the Executive Summary document download).
Some of the suggested items to include in the Blast were:
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A summary of the last ATAA Board meeting, and what the directors are doing, as well as director profiles.
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Mention of key items on the ATAA website, including the Forums.
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Encourage collaboration between our members, and advertise the SIGs (eg. the Melb Quant SIG, etc.).
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National President's Report - March 2024
February 2024 was a productive month for the ATAA, when we embarked on a significant membership recruitment drive.
Participation by the ATAA in the Go Markets “Trading Mastery 2024” online conference on Feb 17, followed by a smaller event on Feb 28, has resulted in a significant number of sign-ups for a one-month trial membership with the ATAA – above expectations. We are in constant communication with these trial members, and working to convert them to full membership. The ATAA is planning to participate in more of these events, both to promote the ATAA to potential members and to provide further value to our existing members. This event was made possible by the members of the Marketing Working Group (WG), working in conjunction with our Admin Secretary, George Gross, who did a lot of the background implementation work, including putting up the relevant promotional web pages and the rest of the infrastructure necessary to make this promotion and sign-up of trial members possible. Having this infrastructure in place now will allow us to conduct further promotional activities in the coming months.
The National Conference WG has started the background work for future ATAA Conferences. A survey of the membership on this specific topic will be conducted in the near future, and I would urge all members to participate in this survey, so we can tailor future events and conferences to the needs of our members.
Another development in February has been the formation of a Quant SIG sub-group, called the “RealTest Coders Workshop”. This will be run by Chris Meakin and Robert Grigg, and will provide a live (online) discussion forum for members working with this development platform, in a workshop format. This group will meet every second Monday of the month.
There are a number of Special Interest Groups (SIGs) operating under the banner of the ATAA. There are also informal get-togethers of ATAA members taking place. Some of these may consider whether they have crossed a threshold, and it may be better for them to formalise their meetings as an ATAA SIG, with the benefits that this brings. There is a process for forming a new SIG, and we encourage members to consider this option.
For those members interested in FX and CFDs, keep an eye out for an announcement soon on the pending formation of an FX-CFD SIG.
There is a Chapter Office Bearers online meeting being planned for the 2nd of April, before the ATAA board meeting. This is an important avenue for office bearers around Australia to provide feedback to the board on matters of interest to them, and I would encourage all office bearers to take part. An invitation will be sent out when the details are finalised.
Jim Haralambidis
ATAA National President
| ATAA Website Update - some really good and useful information:-
The current ATAA website, at ATAA.asn.au, is based on the ClubExpress off-the-shelf system and has been up for roughly a year now – as an upgrade from the previous website. There are a number of key website features, some of which are only available to ATAA members, and some of which are available to anyone.
One of the major key features is the reference library which has had a lot of work done in recent weeks, and now comprises hundreds of videos and speaker presentation documents (for ATAA members only - a key feature of ATAA membership).
One of the most recent additions as been Louise Bedford’s presentation entitled “Trading Psychology Secrets” to the February Adelaide Chapter meeting.
The screenshot shown below demonstrates the current result when you click on the ATAA website menu item: Resources > Presentations by Date. The latest one currently available is the one of Louise’s recent presentation in Adelaide. Further down the page is a link to view the presentation overview, and a link to the restricted video recording in YouTube (available for ATAA members who login to the website).
|  | |
ATAA National Board updates
| | | | There are a few of our national directors sitting on the Marketing Working Group (WG) and they’ve met online a couple of times already. There are a few discussions taking place, including the following:
GO Markets Online Conference – The team helped out with the recent GO Markets Online Conference (held Saturday 17 February, and advised to all members in emails in the days prior). The conference was primarily organised by a Perth ATAA Member who has contacts in the industry, with a lot of assistance from our Admin Secretary (George Gross) to set up a couple of special web pages, including the ATAA Trial Membership Offer.
ATAA Resource Library – This is a very important major feature of the ATAA website, and of ATAA member benefits. The team has been encouraging our support volunteers to make this resource as large and useful as possible, so that it can be used to encourage new ATAA memberships. | | Blast! Feedback Survey – This was a recent activity, as reported elsewhere in this edition of the Blast!
LinkedIn – Do you have an account? - The team are looking at encouraging ATAA members who have LinkedIn accounts to utilise LinkedIn to share useful and relevant information about the ATAA and technical analysis. More news on this soon.
Standardised ATAA Signature Block – To standardise on the appearance of the ATAA “brand”, the team agreed that it would be useful for any ATAA member who wants to include the ATAA logo at the bottom of their emails – in what we call a ‘signature block’ – to have access to a standardised version. The team is working on finalising the appearance of this and will share details soon.
| | | Robert B Brain
(for the Marketing Working Group)
| The new National Board has recently constituted a Conference Working Group to oversea national online and in-person events going forward. The working group has since met and agreed that the first order of business is to survey members and website registrants about what shape they would like future events to take. You will see notification inviting you to complete that survey out shortly, and we look forward to your (anonymous) submission.
Subject to the results of the survey, we aspire to offer an online multi-speaker event later this year, and then follow that up with a national in-person conference in 2025. Feel free to get in touch with the conference working group anytime via the group co-ordinator Alan Clement (see email address below).
Alan Clement
ATAA (Conference) Director
| Calling all ATAA FX Traders
| FX trading is a lonely pastime!
I am an FX trader and would like to explore the opportunity to talk to other members who trade FX. I am reaching out to all members, we area a national organisation.
Most of our ATAA meetings and presentations focus on shares and other products so I think we are in the minority.
Would you be interested in sharing your FX experiences/trades/strategies and/ or just to talk to a like-minded trader?
Please send me an email: romybaker12@gmail.com or call me on 0414 554 967.
Please reach out and we could set up a Zoom meeting for an initial discussion and take it from there
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Cheers
Romy Baker
0414 554 967
| CHAPTER and Special Interest Group (SIG) news and updates
| | RealTest Coders Workshop
(MEL Quant Traders SIG)
| | | RealTest is a new and increasingly popular trading software product that is gaining many new users in Australia. This Coders Workshop is being established as a sub-group of the existing (Melbourne) Quant Traders Special Interest Group (SIG).
This workshop is designed for ATAA members and visitors who are already using RealTest software and who wish to join a workshop group to build knowledge and share experiences.
We envisage that participants in the workshop will:
- Share and discuss code they are developing.
- Share tips on features they are using in RealTest.
- Discuss optimal use of some of the RealTest features.
- Discuss more complex code snippets.
- Discuss problems they are experiencing where others may be able to assist.
- Discuss transition issues from other software such as Amibroker.
- Develop “code buddies” as appropriate.
To make our online meetings as productive as possible we request that participants:
- Join the meeting with their video ON and with their full name showing.
- Be prepared to speak at each meeting to ask questions or provide a reply.
- Be registered on the RealTest Forum and be reasonably familiar with it.
- Reason: We want the workshop to be highly interactive!
The meeting will be chaired by Chris Meakin who is an experienced RealTest user.
At this stage we have scheduled six workshop meetings to be held only online. We will generally schedule them on the second Monday of each month at 8:00 pm. EST (To give members in western states a better chance of attending.)
Robert Grigg and Chris Meakin
SIG Coordinator
| ATAA Forex SIG
(Stay tuned - more news next month)
| The Canberra Chapter held its first meeting of the year on February 20 with 12 local members in attendance. Bruce Taylor presented the ASX Review and gave a top-down analysis including key commodities and some blue-chip movements.
Mark presented the Stock Picking Competition with the twist that includes a created managed fund competing against some individual stock picks. Chris Meakin has entered a basket of four US stocks and a second basket of ASX shares to compete against the aforementioned and Dave Roberts will be tracking a version of the ‘Dogs of the ASX’ which are the top dividend payers.
Our main presentation was by Chris Meakin who has created a version of Ray Dalio’s All Weather Portfolio (AWP) with some surprising results. One of our objectives this year is to track ideas from month to month. Chris will give updates each meeting to track how this systematic strategy performs.
Our Tuesday, March 19 meeting will be a hybrid meeting where we meet in person at Eastlake FC commencing with our local short presentations. At 6.45pm, we have an online presentation from volatility.com.au on trade ideas and systems and options software with some TA education. Dinner at the club will follow the online presentation at 8.00pm.
Mark Gleeson
ATAA Canberra Chapter President | The Melbourne Chapter hybrid meetings are continuing each month, with a good response from both ATAA members and visitors. One of the invaluable features of these hybrid meetings is the in-person networking in the meeting room from 5pm to 6pm, and then again over dinner after 8pm. It’s unfortunate for the remote meeting participants that the broadcast portion of the meeting only runs from 6pm to 8pm, and they are not able to participate in the networking, and sharing of trading and stock selection ideas and strategies.
In addition, the 7-person chapter council has been meeting almost monthly and is working on ways to make the in-person chapter meetings even more useful and interesting, to encourage more members to join in on the meetings. And the committee would love to hear from anyone if there is a sound reason that you are not able to attend – we might be able to address the situation. Don’t forget that public transport runs past the hotel front door, and there is ample car parking around the corner.
Robert Brain
ATAA Melb Chapter President and interim Secretary
(for the Council team: Paul Ash, Jim Haralambidis, Keith Mundy, Tony Hambling, Tony Leonard, Robert Grigg). | We kicked off the new year with an engaging online presentation in January by Zac Zacharia who talked about how to make money in 2024. So, those who attended are now in the know!!
Our venue was not available for Zac’s presentation due to ongoing upgrades, but from February onwards we are back to our usual place.
Similar to 2023, our freshly appointed council members - Ola, Jurij, Michael, Roy and Taso - will collaborate to oversee chapter responsibilities.
Our chapter representatives convened early February at our usual hangout, Tavern 540, to chart the course for the upcoming year. Louise Bedford is our scheduled guest speaker for the February gathering. The council has compiled a roster of potential speakers for the remainder of the year, and efforts are underway to bring these plans to fruition.
We've also committed to harnessing the diverse knowledge base of our chapter, encouraging members to contribute short or extended presentations and engage in mutual learning.
A very popular activity last year, led by Jurij, was the stock picking competition. We were all trying to beat the index and each other. There were winners each month who got a very liquid asset as a prize. We plan to do this again this year.
All in all, it's been a solid start to the year. Looking forward to meeting everyone in-person or in cyberspace.
Ola Hansson
| The Sydney chapter is taking exciting new steps to ensure our members are getting the most up to date and informative educational material available. Most recently we invited Sunil Mangwani to present his three step method to trading. Additionally he walked us through his process of using Fibonacci to identify opportunities in the financial markets. The session overview and video recording are available in the ATAA Reference Library.
Furthermore, The well travelled and well respected Mary McNamara returns this month with her popular Market Update segment. Additionally the Sydney chapter will be hosting in person dinners bi-monthly with subsidised meals for our members. Registration details will be announced at a later date.
The Sydney chapter looks forward to an exciting year with loads of Sophisticated speakers and exciting in-depth discussions at both our online only meetings and dinner events.
Sydney Chapter Council | ATAA members are automatically affiliate members of the International Federation of Technical Analysts. ATAA membership gives you access to IFTA resources including: certification programs, educational events and networking opportunities, including participation in the IFTA Conferences. The information below is the latest update from IFTA.
IFTA has announced that the 2024 IFTA Annual Conference will be in Hainan, China, 4-6 October 2024, with the IFTA AGM and Board Meeting one day earlier - 3 October. For more details see the IFTA website.
IFTA Journal 24 (a professional journal published by IFTA) - We are pleased to announce that the 2024 IFTA Journal is now available for viewing and download from the IFTA website. (Note that it is a 79 pages PDF, and 16MB in size).
IFTA Update (quarterly newsletter) - The IFTA Update is a quarterly newsletter that is available to members of the ATAA. The latest issue is now available and contains the following articles:
- IFTA President's Report to Colleagues
- Highlights from 2023 IFTA Conference
- Congratulations New and Re-elected IFTA Board Members
- Education Lounge
- The Option Greek Rho
- Razor Forex System
- Congratulations New CFTes!
- CFTe and MFTA Exam Dates
- Member Society News
- Calendar-at-a-Glance
- and more
| Join the ATAA to improve your understanding of how to
invest or trade successfully in the financial markets
focusing on the correct use and application of Technical Analysis
| Technical Analysis - Case studies and more | Starting next month we will endeavour to include a Technical Analysis article here. Contributions are welcome.
| ATAA Member Perks and Benefits
| If you're not an ATAA member, and you are considering joining, you might be interested to know there are many good reasons to sign-up, including the following:
- Education and networking opportunities
- Special Interest Groups (SIGs) (only for members)
- News and information
- Online Forums
- Formal education (discounts for members)
- Extensive Resource Library (access for members)
- Annual ATAA Conference (discounted for members).
| We do hope you have found this edition of the Blast! Monthly News interesting and useful. If not, or if you have any feedback, please feel free to email me directly.
Robert B. Brain
Blast! Newsletter Editor
| |