Richard Demille Wyckoff (1873–1934) was an early 20th-century pioneer in the technical approach to studying the stock market. He is considered one of the five “titans” of technical analysis, along with Dow, Gann, Elliott, and Merrill. At age 15 he took a job as a stock runner for a New York brokerage, then he became the head of his own firm while still in his 20s. He also founded and for nearly two decades wrote and edited “The Magazine of Wall Street,” which at one point had more than 200,000 subscribers. Wyckoff was an avid student of the markets and an active tape reader and trader. He observed the market activities and campaigns of the legendary stock operators of his time, including JP Morgan and Jesse Livermore. From his observations and interviews with those big-time traders, Wyckoff codified the best practices of Livermore and others into laws, principles, and techniques of trading methodology, money management, and mental discipline.
Mr. Wyckoff saw retail investors getting fleeced repeatedly, and dedicated himself to instructing the public about “the real rules of the game” as played by the large interests, or “smart money,” behind the scenes. In the 1930s he founded a school, which later became the Stock Market Institute. The school's central offering was a course integrating the concepts that Wyckoff had learned about how to identify large operators' accumulation and distribution of stock, and how to take positions in harmony with these big players. His time-tested insights are as valid today as when they were first articulated.