John Murphy is a well-known analyst and money manager. The author of several books on trading. More than 30 years specializing in a technical approach to investing. In this article, we will talk about the career of a financier and his method.
Field of activity of John Murphy
In the field of investment, any well-known name is associated with a certain strategy in people. For example, hedge firms associate with George Soros. The name of Peter Lynch pops up at the mention of mutual funds. And when discussing technical analysis, I recall the famous trader John Murphy. The author’s books on this topic are now very popular.
Currently, 73-year-old Murphy heads two of his own firms: MurphyMorris Money Management Corp and MurphyMorris Inc. The first deals with money management, and the second is a network resource based on technical analysis.
Most Popular Edition
There is one work that surpassed in fame and significance all the books that John Murphy wrote. “Technical Analysis of Financial Markets” is its full name. The book became popular in 1999. And the first edition dates from 1986. At the moment, all technical market analysts are actively using it in their practice. The book has been translated into eight languages.
Career start
John began work in the second half of the 60s. Then the scope of technical analysis was the creation of graphs using pencil and paper. In the 70s, the young man received a bachelor's degree in economics and wanted to pursue a career in equity analysis. John began with a rather modest position, not promising him great prospects.
"Master of Business Administration" - that was the name of Murphy's specialization. To get it, John studied marketing, management, accounting, finance and business for two years.
In the future, Murphy will tell you that he never thought of becoming a technical analyst. The young man was more interested in the field of securities. But at that time an unstable situation was observed in the labor market, and this was a decisive factor. CIT Financial Corporation invited John to become an assistant portfolio manager. More precisely, we needed a chart assistant.
John Murphy considered the acquisition of this position as an opportunity to build a career in a large company. But then the young man was so carried away by technical analysis that he completely forgot the previous plans.
At that time, the hero of this article read all the available publications on this topic. There were very few of them. Now, according to the trader, there are many times more specialized books.
Futures market
John Murphy came to him only by coincidence. Then the market collapsed, and many securities were in their hands. The hero of this article was just lucky to be at the right time in the right place. In the 70s, the analyst worked for the most part at Merrill Lynch, specializing in product markets. In particular, Murphy headed the department of technical analysis.
Just at that time, people began to have an interest in commodity markets, which grew into a real boom during the seventies. New indicators are constantly being developed that can be applied even in modern conditions, by embedding in computer programs. The main focus of John's work was research and financial management. In the first half of the 80s, he left Merrill Lynch and became an independent consultant. Murphy worked, wrote and trained in the field of money management.
The advent of the internet
All the knowledge accumulated in the first years of work, John outlined in the work "Technical analysis of futures markets", published in 1986. The demand and popularity of the book was due to the beginning of the development of the era of computers. Subsequently, a large-scale branching of the Internet was added to this. Murphy regarded the global network as an excellent means of disseminating information in terms of technical analysis trends.
Soon, John personally appeared on the Web. In 1996, he founded the resource MurphyMorris.com with Greg Morris. On the website, the financier taught people the basic tenets of technical analysis. In principle, he did the same thing on television, speaking weekly on CNBC financial news and monthly on the Trading Week program. The trader simply considered the global network to be a more powerful source of information dissemination.
