Episode 52: Vincent Randazzo, CMT
01:14:01 Share

Welcome to Fill the Gap, the official podcast series of the CMT Association, hosted by David Lundgren and Tyler Wood. This monthly podcast will bring veteran market analysts and money managers into conversations that will explore the interviewee's investment philosophy, their process, and decision-making tools.

By learning more about their key mentors, early influences, and their long careers in financial services, Fill the Gap will highlight lessons our guests have learned over many decades and multiple market cycles. Join us in conversation with the men and women of Wall Street who discovered, engineered, and refined the discipline of technical market analysis. ♪

Fill the Gap is brought to you with support from Optima, a professional charting and data analytics platform. Whether you're a professional analyst, portfolio manager, or trader, Optima provides advanced technical and quantitative software to help you discover financial opportunities. Candidates in the CMT program gain free access to these powerful tools during the course of their study. Learn more at Optima.com.

Hello and welcome to episode 52 of Fill the Gap, the official podcast of CMT Association. My name is Tyler Wood. I am a CMT charterholder and joined as always by the illustrious portfolio manager, David Lundgren, a CFA and CMT charterholder. How are you doing, my friend? Good to see you. I'm in the middle of the woods on a lake in Maine, so I couldn't be happier. Yeah, bragging to all of us working stiffs, still pounding pavement. Nice and cool. Yeah.

Dave, we just had a fantastic hour-long conversation here on episode 51 with Vincent Randazzo. And I think he dropped maybe the best quote of all time. Why don't you share with our audience? Give them a little sneak preview about what this conversation led to.

Yeah, I really do. I think it's one of the best quotes of all the podcasts we've done together. But first, I just want to say that, you know, Vince is, if you know Vince, you'll know what I'm talking about. He's easily one of the nicest guys in the business. Incredibly humble, really smart, and just a wonderful guy. So it was great to have him on the podcast to have a discussion about, you know, his background and his new firm and things like that. So he's up to a lot of really great things. We had a great chance to talk to him about a lot of that.

But he dropped this quote, and I wrote it down as fast as I could, so I'm not sure that in playback it'll be exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of, and I think I'm pretty close. He said, what ETFs have taught us is that an advisor who provides buy and hold advice is worth three basis points. So how are you going to earn your 1%?

And it's one of those conclusions that's been derived by marketplace reality. Like the marketplace has gotten to 3% – 3 basis points to buy and hold an ETF. So that's what it's worth. And that's been so obvious, but Vince just laid it bare in terms of like what it actually means. And so at the end of the day, it's like –

how are you going to help me beyond, you know, buy and hold? And what we obviously focus on and center on, and Vince does a great job of it with his new firm, is to protect you during these downdrafts. That's worth a fee beyond three basis points. But if you're not doing something beyond that, you're worth three basis points. And I just thought that was brilliant.

Absolutely. Vince has worked in so many different spots, but where I first met him in 2016 was on the team at LM Lowry. And for those longer standing members of the community, they will remember Paul Desmond and Tracy Knudsen and Dick Dixon, all beloved technicians who, as Ralph would say, are in the chart room in the sky somewhere. So Vince is really the living memory of the

the Lowry work, which is largely based on breadth studies. And I think this conversation about how you just improve upon buy and hold, because 75% of the time, that's probably what most investors should be doing.

And being able to spot that market deterioration, even if an index is making new all-time highs, that's maybe the secret sauce that Paul and the folks at Lowry's, the longest running publication of any research firm in the United States, were after.

This was just a delightful conversation with, as you mentioned, Dave, a really good guy. If you're coming to a future CMT conference, find Vince, grab a cup of coffee. You'll have a lifelong friend. With that, I will let you enjoy Fill the Gap with Vincent Randazzo.

Welcome to Fill the Gap, the official podcast of the CMT Association. I'm Dave Lundgren, and along with my co-host and fellow CMT charterholder, Tyler Wood, we are pleased to welcome Vincent Randazzo, also a CMT.

Vince has a storied career, having worked with several large firms, including Morgan Stanley, NASDAQ, and UBS. But most importantly, Vince worked at Lowry's, the oldest technical research firm still in operation in the country. More recently, he's decided to blaze his own trail, starting Viewright Advisors in January.

Not much longer after launching his firm, his defender system issued its first sell in three years. So we're definitely looking forward to digging into that and much more. So let's jump in. Vince, welcome to Fill the Gap.

Thanks, Dave. Yeah, thanks, Tyler. Yeah, no, it's great to be here. I really do appreciate it. I just wanted to start by thanking you guys, you know, for having me on, but also just for doing everything that you do. You know, thank you for what you do, what you've done for our discipline and for your work furthering, you know, the work of technical analysts everywhere in the world, literally. So it's just, yeah, it's great. I appreciate that.

Absolutely, Vince. Thanks for having us down to Florida in mid-January for the event. I think all of us New Yorkers need to plan that annually to come to Vince's backyard sometime around mid-January. And I've long followed your work and really appreciate you coming on today. Looking forward to this conversation.

Yeah, no, likewise. Appreciate that. And I'll follow up with thanks for the kind words, Vince. It's our honor. Absolutely. As you know, this community is just full of wonderful people. And the more that we can share and bring everybody together so we can learn from each other, the better off we'll all be. So really appreciate your support.

your kind words and absolutely appreciate you joining us today because I know you have a lot to say. I consider you to be one of the foremost, I guess, on the forefront of researching breadth, both in terms of what you've done recently, but in terms of what you've learned while you were at Lowry's, which is clearly the mothership of breadth. So really looking forward to your contributions today. So thanks again for joining us.

So before we jump in, let's hear a little bit about your career. And it seems, if I recall correctly, you, like many of us, kind of stumbled on technical analysis when you said, hey, wow, this stuff actually works. I should probably go learn about it because you saw something crazy happen in the market. And the only thing that made sense of it all was technicals. And then here we now have Vince as a CMT charterholder. So fill us in on that.

Yeah, no, I mean, I think it was it was an interesting path because in college I was an economics major. So I had this sort of broad base and, you know, very data driven, fundamentally driven. And at my university, Drew University, and we had this program called the Wall Street semester. So we would go. It was in New Jersey. So we would go every every semester.

Every time we had a class, which was once a week, we would go into Manhattan, Wall Street, the trade centers at the time, and we would hear from a different person who worked on Wall Street, who did a different job. This idea of fundamental analysis and portfolio management, that all really fit with my personality type.

And it was something I really was kind of obsessive about. So I guess I was more interested on the fundamental side, to your point, that is not something I was expecting at all. But, you know, get out of school, 2002, start my first job at Morgan Stanley Equity Research Sales. And, you know, obviously surrounded by a bunch of smart, capable people. But I was lucky enough to be on a desk where they're all really open minded.

And when I say that, I mean about different disciplines. Even though we were talking the research call

from the institutional side, which is really driven by the strategy, economics, and then fundamental, all the fundamental analysts and those morning calls that we had every day, you know, at the desk at 730 in the morning. Right. So I'll never, I'll never forget those mornings, um, you know, commuting in from my parents' house, uh, all the way into midtown Manhattan, you know? Um, so, so that was always fun waking up to get that, get that early train to get out there. But, um,

In that time, obviously, the market was having a lot of trouble. We were still deflating the bubble from, you know, 99, 2000. And I remember that, you know, Rick Bensinger came on. He came over to our desk. We were right around the corner from him. If you know Rick Bensinger. I do. Yeah. Good man. Out of, you know, he was great. And yeah. And, you know, he trained up some of the best, you know, Katie Stockton and Mark Newton were there, you know.

who came out of his bullpen basically, right? And we know that the kind of amazing careers that they've had. So really, really something special was going on there at that time. But he came over to our desk and he said, hey, anybody have a jacket? I'm going to do a hit on CNBC. I don't have a coat, you know? So somebody lent him a jacket. So of course we're going to watch, you know, we're going to watch the hit. We're fully invested at that point, you know? And this was October,

And it was literally I'm pretty sure it was the day of the bottom. But he said, you know, there's, you know, we've X, Y, Z signs of exhaustion. He was a big DeMarc guy. And, you know, there was X, Y, Z signs of exhaustion. And, you know, we think this is this is the bottom here or very close to it. And that was it.

And it was kind of amazing just to see that in person and sort of be part of it in a way. But I also, you know, resonated with me that, okay, there's definitely something here. I should investigate it. You know, again, just me being sort of a data-driven person with my background, I wanted to investigate it. And also that idea of risk management really hit me.

as far as just having been framed by that environment coming into the market in 2002 when everything is sort of melting down. I think Morgan Stanley at the time came out with a

a list of stocks literally called the casket basket where the idea was that you know of this list of names most of them are going to go out of business but the few that survive are going to be you know the haymakers right wow so like yeah this is the kind of stuff that was going on and this is what framed my my whole thinking process so that combination of

seeing what was going on with technical analysis with Rick Bensinger's call, the whole risk management advantage to it, and then just having been a little bit

more broad-based. I went to a liberal arts school and we studied all different things. And one of the things I had interest in was physics on the science side, and then I also had an interest in psychology. And a lot of, I think, what goes on with the market has a lot to do with both of those things. Absolutely. In addition to the core principle of economics, which is supply and demand. So it all just kind of coalesced, I guess, in that way, or really early in my career.

When did you get your CMT? So I got my CMT. I spent all of 2007 studying and passing all the tests. So by January, I had the CMT. Was there reference material in the CMT program that sort of came to life as you watched the meltdown? Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, at that time, we...

It was you read all the books. You know, it wasn't the study guide. It was all the books. Right. So you're reading all these really famous books about all these time periods that were really unique in their own right. But then seeing all that history almost repeat itself in real time was kind of amazing. And just to be at my eyes open to it at that time.

Could not have been better timing, you know, for me, my career, but the people who are speaking to my clients, you know, found found ourselves on the right side of, you know, one of the biggest bear markets that we've ever seen. And I remember in like early 2008 getting into like literal argue, like literal arguments with.

colleagues who are more fundamental purists on the desk about some of the banks maybe going out of business and that the market just looked really poorly set up for a really long, painful decline. That was my edge. The people I talked to, I was like,

able to understand the economics picture, the strategy picture, distill that down, and then go after the stocks and sectors that were still working, but also have this little other piece called technical analysis that can overlay to say, well, hey, listen, this analyst is really good. He's really smart. I think this is a good call. It's just not the right time for it or whatever, just to have that extra bit of color

It's such a big difference to me, my clients. And, you know, later on in my career, it sort of helped help me set myself apart because I'm in a New York, you know, the New York City market, you know, really hyper competitive. Everyone is trying to trying to get that next spot and certainly helped me throughout my career.

You mentioned the team at Morgan Stanley, Rick Benson, you're in Katie Stockton and Mark Newton. When you were at UBS going into the great financial crisis, were there other folks who utilize technical analysis or even folks who held the CMT designation?

Yeah. So when I was on my desk, there wasn't anybody. So I became that guy. Yeah. Like that was awesome for me. It was a group of, I think probably we started out with equity research sales. So it shrank as I was there, but I think it started out with 20 people and not one person was a real technician. And that to me was also something that I felt was important is just having the credibility to,

associated with a designation like the CMT to say that, hey, I'm an authority here, right? I'm not just pretending like I know something because I know something about the 50-day moving average and the 200-day moving average or whatever, right? So that was one thing that, again, really cemented that idea, I'm going to get the CMT, right?

And then the other thing was Peter Lee. He was a technician over there at the time. He worked with Dan Wontropski, I think, you know, at some point there. And I knew Dan kind of casually through UBS. We overlapped a little bit. But it was really Peter Lee who influenced me at that point in my career because he was the head technician. He was on the squawk box every day. And, you know, he was just really gracious with his time and be able to sit down and talk to him and

And he was another, like, just, I would say a big picture guy. And I, that resonates really well with me. Like, I don't see myself as much of a very, much as a trader. Like, I'm not a short-term technical guy. I like, I like structures and big picture, seeing those battles, you know, of supply and demand, you know,

carry out over long periods of time. To me, that's interesting because I don't have to be right on every little move. I just have to generally be swimming with the right tide, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. You know, the conversation you mentioned about the debate you had during 2008 with the banks going out of business and whatnot at a very large scale, very prominent such debate for that very, for that, the, the, the,

The very existence of that debate is one of the reasons we have we can call amongst our CMT charterholders Bill Miller, the fourth. Tyler, if you remember, we we had this discussion. I think it was episode if I remember, it was 17 and a half. We had Bill on. It was 17 and a half because we did this sort of intramonth.

uh episode when he was uh one of he was that he spoke with me at the symposium in florida actually and um it was basically watching the world implode and just recognizing that they just they're missing some part of their edge to your to your point fence there was something missing in their edge and to sharpen their edge uh bill miller had his son bill miller iv go out and get his cmt and so now we have

great privilege of having him in our community as well. So that's generally how a lot of folks come to their CMT is that it's more about what on earth is happening here. I'm missing something in my edge and let's fix that by getting our CMT. So it's interesting that you brought that up as well. And when did you get to Lowry's? So Lowry's is a bit of a, you know, surreptitious path, I guess. I was, after, you know, after I was at UBS, I went, I tried to

make a bid for the institutional side. I just felt like if I wanted to eventually get into portfolio management, this was the path I would have to take.

And, you know, me not having the ability to sort of sit and get through the CFA, I tried. I did try to study for it. Actually, before the CMT, like when I was at Morgan Stanley still, I still had to like scratch that itch, if you will, of saying, well, I want to tackle this thing, this beast, the CFA beast. Yeah.

And it go that sort of traditional route because it was just something that would have opened a lot more doors. I felt at that time. Um, and it turns out guys that I, uh,

I could not get very enthusiastic about pension fund accounting. So it did not resonate with me. And I was not able to really dedicate myself to that. I didn't even finish studying for the first level. I was just like, guys, this isn't going to work. But anyway, that brings me back to the next step, which was

What brought me to Lowry? So I was at NASDAQ and still in midtown Manhattan and sort of doing that commute.

But, you know, life happens, honestly. My wife had our first child and we had to consider the possibility of, you know, moving away from the city further into the suburbs. And that was just something I had to really wrestle with and think about how do I how do I do this? Right. So I wanted to open my my net of places I was looking and it was had nothing to do with NASDAQ. I really loved it. They're great people on that desk as well. Market intelligence desk. But.

But I needed to make a change so I could plan for my life and the big picture of my life, which is I want to spend time. You know, time is my currency, right? The older you get, the more you think that way. But long story short, I saw this listing on LinkedIn for Lowry Research. And I was like, oh, isn't that the place that Paul Desmond owns? And, you know, I, of course, you know, knew Paul and everything.

knew his work at least and Dick Dixon and I thought hey this is this is my chance to work with living legends doing what I genuinely loved expressly so like I wasn't spread thin having to spend a little bit of my time focusing on the technical side it was that was my job um

And also fulfilling that lifestyle goal, right, of relocating to a different venue where I would have a much shorter commute. And, you know, the weather is a perk here in South Florida, at least for seven months out of the year, I would say. Yeah. You're still down there now? Still down there. I'm still in Jupiter. And, you know, that just, you know, that took me to another level being there. Yeah, for sure. It must have been.

something to work with Paul Desmond. I mean, Tyler, I'm assuming that most people know what Lowry's is, but maybe Vince, just give us a quick 30-second overview of what the company is, how long it's been around. Yeah. So they are the longest continuously published newsletter in the country, if not the world. They started in 1938. L.M. Lowry started the company. And Paul Desmond,

Found, you know, found him basically and ended up buying the company and he worked there for, you know, 60 years owning company for 50. And, you know, some of the work that they did was really focused on breath, but also.

They had this proprietary models of buying power and selling pressure. The idea is that if you can visualize these forces of supply and demand, then you would understand when you compare that to the price trend, you can understand what kind of strength there is really behind a given move. I love that concept, again, coming from an economics background.

I love that concept of the supply and demand and being able to see it and say, you know, it's a lot less about what people should be doing or what the market should be doing.

what people even say that they're doing. It's about what is the money doing, you know, and being able to see that, you know, just took it to, you know, took it to a really practical place for me. Yeah, I should know this, Tyler, but

I'm assuming that... But the Lowry's work is still... It's all proprietary? Like, we haven't seen any of that... Any of their work released to the CMT or anything, right? No, no, no. Not at all. Yeah. But in the show notes, we can put in...

Bill Kelleher and I invited Paul Desmond and Tracy Knudsen to the 2014 symposium in New York. They gave a great session on buying power and selling pressure, talked about topping and bottoming formations and what to look for. We missed them both dearly. But then again, in 2016, Paul Desmond came

was our honoree for the annual award of the CMT Association. And I think that was the last time I got to see Paul. He was at the conference in New York. And at that point, he was recognizing that

The organization had started really just to represent the professionalism amongst research analysts, but that the community had shifted so greatly. I mean, there was a paradigm shift amongst the members of the community and certainly at our conferences, all to the buy-side roles that he felt was much more proof that technical analysis adds tremendous value to the investment management process. Right.

He was thrilled to see that and I believe had some plans to open his own funds shortly before he passed.

Yeah, no, he did. And you brought up, you brought up also Tracy and she was actually the person who I reached out to through LinkedIn. You know, we, we had been connected and, you know, she was also from New Jersey as was I. So we had that in common. And of course, you know, she was a very talented CMT and we had a great conversation and she's like, no, I think you'd be a really great fit for this, you know, for this team. You know, and she kind of got the ball rolling at least. So,

She was an excellent board member. She served for two and a half years on the CMT Board of Directors as well.

Yeah. Yeah. I think I heard a story that she was like in labor with her son or something and she was like reading CMT books. That sounds like Tracy. Very dedicated. Very dedicated. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. So you got down there in 2016 and Dick Dixon and Paul were still actively writing books.

What was the interview process like? Oh, wow. I mean, the interview process. Yeah, it was kind of intimidating, kind of amazing, though. I mean, Paul, I just remember Paul, I sat down in Paul's office and he was like, I guess he just started talking about

his pre it was sort of a preamble into breath and why it matters, but he was saying, you know, in nature, if you notice, there's not really any straight lines in nature. You know, those things are, you know, even, even if you're talking about, you know, a mountain mountains really high and it goes really high up or whatever, but it's a gradual slope to get there, especially when you're on the mountain. Right. It's not, nothing's ever straight up, straight down, you know, waterfall even is not, it's rarely, you know, straight line. So, um,

I guess his point, the point why he brought that up. And then he started talking about how, when he first started working at Lowry with Mr. Lowry, they brought in a potential client. And apparently he was an old like stockbroker, a floor broker from the New York stock exchange. And he had been there in the crash of 29. And the guy was telling the story. This gentleman was telling the story of it. And he had said, well,

It was just out of nowhere. Stocks just kept falling, and there was no bid, and there was nothing. It just was straight down. And Paul was like, he said, it didn't make sense to me. It didn't make sense how there could be no warning, how there could be nothing to tell us that there was this erosion under the surface of price.

and that you should really be prepared for what's next. And that's how we got to start talking about, you know, breath. And this was kind of all in the interview process. I mean, this is like, I sat in his office for, I think, almost three hours. Yeah. Just in his office. I mean, it was incredible. And I felt like I learned so much more than I had probably learned in my past two jobs just by sitting in that room with him for three hours, right? Yeah. Yeah.

And so with your, maybe tell us a little bit about your transition now to ViewRight Advisors. I'm assuming that it's still based on this connection between the popular averages and the breadth beneath and the disconnects between the two and the signaling that may provide. So maybe give us some background on that. Yeah, so with ViewRight, I wanted to focus expressly on

indicators that are not created by me, just raw, almost like raw data. If I look at the raw data hard enough or well enough, what can I glean from it? Because we know that there are a lot of data that you can manipulate in a way that is unnatural. Because of that, there's subjectivity that gets introduced. My whole point is that I don't want

I want to limit the subjectivity. I want it to be totally systematic and totally objective. And my basis was the...

was breadth, really the advanced decline lines, and just being able to watch them closely enough, compare them closely enough with the indices. And the idea of divergences is something that really fascinated me and Paul. And he and I would have these long conversations in his office, and Dick too. We would all talk about, how do we make this better? It is such a great tool in its own right, but how do we make it better? Because it's sort of like

We got into these conversations because look at these periods where you have these really long divergences. For example, there was a long one that Richard Russell identified that nobody else really knew about before the crash in 1929, where it was like,

over a year and a half long, they use harvest divergence. So then the question became, how do we make this a useful timing tool? So it's sort of like when the fundamental guys come and they talk about yield curve inversion and that being a really valuable tool, but it's not a good timing tool, right? So I tasked myself with finding a way to make it a better timing tool. And that has to do with

you know rate of change figures and momentum and then different bringing in different indicators so that you understand when is the fragility that's been introduced by that divergence to the point where it becomes dangerous and to the point where you know any little nudge will push that jenga pile over right so that was that was sort of the premise that was my goal and then

Just because I am the way I am in terms of an investor, I don't like to make a lot of changes. I don't like to make a lot of decisions. And I tend to be more focused on just capturing the bigger trends and not trying to trade. Like I said, I'm not a trader. I don't really like that very much. So it was sort of like, how can we improve buy and hold?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And holds great until it's not. And it is great. Probably 75 percent of the time. That's, you know, percentage time that the market is up. But what about the other 25 percent? If we can see through the divergences that that train is coming down the tracks. Well, why don't we just step aside, let it pass us and then get back on the rail? Yeah.

So, that's what I really wanted to do. So, you have this sort of dual mandate of being invested as long as you possibly can be, buying the dips along the way in a systematic way, but also systematically decreasing exposure as stock participation in the market progressively dwindles. And we know this because we see it in...

A lot of the indicators that we watch. And the idea was that you can still sort of benefit from the market, even when you have a starting of a hollowing out, because there are still a group of stocks that are going up.

So why not sort of recycle that money into those stocks that are still going up or start to raise cash, whatever you want to do. But the point is that there are fewer stocks when you have that divergence. Mathematically, it's just saying you've got more stocks going down every day than are going up. And as a portfolio manager, you sort of need to know that because presumably you're not going to be weighted the same way the major indices are weighted.

And those big stocks that carry those indices, particularly at the end of bull markets, are going to be so overrepresented at the time that no normal person would hold them in those concentrations. And I think this is especially true today when you've seen the concentrations reach record highs. ED HARRISON Yeah, the notion of breadth and the

The popular average, the way that I, everything you just said really, really resonates with me. And one of the ways that I've tried to explain what breadth means is that you have a car, that's the index. The breadth is the amount of gas in the tank. And a car can still move forward if it's on an eighth of a tank of gas. It doesn't stop moving forward until it runs out of gas entirely. And so what you're trying to do, the nuance you're trying to bring to the discussion is

how do you know when the tank is actually empty and the index now is going to start going down? Because again, an index, what we've learned in recent history is that an index can go up for prolonged periods even if it's running on fumes. Yeah. I think that's such a great analogy. I also like thinking about it in terms of just liquidity. When I explain this to, I would say, your normal RIA or advisor who tends to be a little bit more fundamentally minded,

I borrow this from Tom McClellan. I've heard him say this before, comparing breadth to liquidity. And I just thought that was such a great way to communicate to people, especially fundamentally minded people, that this is about liquidity. How much money is being divided over how many stocks?

And how confident-- the way I interpret it too is in terms of confidence. The more confident investors are, the more money they're going to put to work and the more broadly they're going to put it to work. And if you think about breadth as also being sort of like a freight train, bigger freight train, better breadth, harder to stop, harder to reverse.

You want a freight train that has a lot of cars in it because as a portfolio manager, that means my probability of success in picking the right stocks is going to be a lot higher. And I will always just want the highest probabilities and the best probability outcomes. And that's one of the ways you do it. So you've got cars can keep moving even on a very low bit of gas. I love that. Yeah.

We've got the freight train, right, that it's harder to stop in reverse. When I talk to college kids, I explain it, the chubby Midwestern boy that I am who loved the Chicago Bulls. I was like, everybody thinks about Michael Jordan, but breadth is a measure of your bench strength. And the 90s Bulls won all those championships because they had Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman, like everybody on the team. So to your point about liquidity, there's always somebody else to pass the ball to you.

Guys, I think this is TA 101. We should put this in the curriculum, teaching through analogies for those who are new to market breadth. Vince, I wanted to ask, there's a million ways to measure market breadth. What do you like to use? Expanding daily new lows, new highs? Talk to us a little bit about what you favor in terms of breadth measurement. Yeah.

I like to keep it really simple. It's New York Stock Exchange, all issues, if you ask the client line. I also like to use the common stocks version because there are moments when

the common stocks will tell you something that the all issues doesn't and vice versa. So I think they're both tremendously valuable and I like to use them both. But I also do like to use new highs, new lows, and then in certain timeframes too, six months, 12 months, et cetera. And then this idea of also upside participation.

And that to me is partially breadth, it's partially momentum. But what I mean by that is the percentage of stocks above their long-term moving averages, and then shorter time frame, shorter-term moving averages, and that there are commensurate counteractions as a result of those divergences. So you get shorter divergences and shorter indicators. They tend to be less meaningful than longer divergences and longer indicators, for example.

Do you use the advance decline line on just the S&P 500 and just the mid cap and just the 600 so you get rid of all the other stuff that's not in the index that you're actually measuring? No, it's the all issues in New York Stock Exchange. Is that an explicit decision or is there a reason you don't look at the advance decline line on the S&P 500? Yeah, for the S&P 500, I just feel like I'm trying to get away from

the idea that there are these select group of names that someone has decided is in this list. Again, just removing the human element even when it comes to that level. But also that those are probably the stocks that are going to peak last. If anything, you can sometimes see

a lead effect or even a head fake effect where you can get a new high in the S&P 500 AD line, for example, but they can reverse. We saw that in, I think, the summer of 2022 where you actually did have a new high in the S&P 500 AD line, but of course we had a lower low that followed

So whereas the all issues doesn't really – the all issues and the common stocks version, they don't tend to give you those potential false signals of confidence. And I think if I'm correct, is the –

We're just looking at it now, but is the NYAD, is that not very close to hitting a new high already? Yeah. If it hasn't already? The all issues version is at a new high. I think it started in mid-May. But the common stocks version has not yet. It's close, but it has not yet. Yeah. So I used to follow the advanced decline line. And obviously, the fact that I know that it's breaking out to new highs indicates that I still follow it. But

The reason I don't really act on it is because I just think that there's something wrong with it, to be honest. I just think that if you look at the decline we just had throughout February to April, I mean, that was a pretty vicious, nasty decline, and virtually every stock on the planet went down. But the advanced decline line

basically went sideways and you can argue had a slightly upward tilt to it throughout that entire decline so it just it just seems like i don't know if there's some something with regards to the structure of the market or something's just different so that that was sort of the catalyst to what you know made me create the different breadth measures that i use today and i just i'm curious now that you've you've spent all this these years the number of years

Thinking about breadth, I mean, do you agree with what I'm saying? And if you do, how have you dealt with it? If you disagree with me, I'd love to hear that as well. Yeah. Yeah, I do agree. And that's why I do use the common stocks version as well, because the all issues is going to include preferred preferred stocks. It's going to include closed and closed and funds even. So things that act like bonds, right.

at times are, are included in that. And, uh, obviously that's not what we're after. We, we want a pure, pure stock gauge. So yeah, that's why I use the common stocks only version, but I do, I do watch other flavors. Right. Um, but what you don't want to do is, uh,

Watch anything that has any kind of bias to you know, particularly to the downside, you know So I think like Nasdaq ever some people who want to sort of bait you on Twitter wrote will kind of bring up the the Nasdaq 80 line at any given point in time and say like it's bearish and it's like yeah Well, it just always looks that way so you have to yeah, you know, there's context here. Yeah, okay

Beyond breadth measures, I'm assuming you use a suite of tools for a mosaic view on what you're looking at. Talk to us about things outside of breadth that are part of your process. Yeah. I mean, I keep it focused. I really do keep it focused on breadth. So I mentioned earlier, new highs, new lows, and then on multiple timeframes, and then the percentage of stocks of the longer-term moving averages. So they're all sort of in the realm of breadth.

And I try to keep it really honest and straightforward and easy because I'm just a simple guy. You know, I got to keep it easy for myself. And, you know, I don't want to be lied to by any of my indicators, basically. So I'm really careful about the ones that I use and the ones I think I can trust and have been proven to be trustworthy and the ones that maybe aren't. Makes sense. Yeah.

Okay, so let's maybe talk a little bit more about what you've been doing since. You've moved over to your own firm. I think you started it in January. And as luck would have it, the market kind of started to melt just shortly thereafter. But you managed to be on the right side of it vis-a-vis this breadth work. And I believe you refer to it as the defender. So give us some info about that as well. Yeah, so what I'm trying to do is to identify...

vis-a-vis breadth, different market regimes or I guess expected market regimes of risk reward outcomes. So I put it into four different buckets and I say, okay, these are the qualities that are common in this regime and these are the outcomes you can expect in terms of volatility and expected return.

And this is how you should be invested based on those things. So it's really simplistic. On the way out, we scale out because we know that tops are a process. I mean, you know that a stock that's super, super speculative might top a year before the Dow components would. So because of that and in recognition of that,

And that idea that you could recycle capital, it's a third, a third, a third out, right? And that's how we do it. It's not this binary switch that we just flip and say, okay, we're out, and then we're back in. It's a third, a third, a third out. And again, they're all very systematic in terms of what triggers those.

And it doesn't always go to full cash, by the way. And that's an important component, too, is that we're really adaptive based on what the market is showing us at any given time. But then on the reverse side, we're basically saying, OK, well, at a bottom, there's this real asymmetry between return and risk. So in recognition of that, there is no gradation. We just push all the way back in.

MIKE GREEN: Yeah, I'm curious. So your process did a great job in-- was it January or February? February, or both? DAVID ROSENBERG: Yeah, so it was February. So in January, in our note in January, we're basically saying that-- we were bringing up a couple of different factors. And we were saying, in this regime that we're currently in, which is a fully invested regime that has run this length, which is a pretty extended regime,

The third year tends to be really rough, tends to have not great returns, even negative returns in some cases. So that was sort of the preamble. And then, of course, by February, those negative divergences in breadth had gotten to the point where they had become serious enough. And then we got our triggers and some of the other indicators that we watch. So you basically say, OK, a third out. And that was February 21st. So two days after that.

the all-time high in a lot of the indices, S&P 500, S&P 1500, S&P 100, the Russell 3000, Russell 1000. They all made new all-time highs, but breadth had been declining for over almost three months at that point. That was a red flag to us to say, okay, a third off. Then we had another sell signal came a few weeks later on March 14th for a third out.

And that, again, was just sort of like continuation of the pattern that you had this look and feel of a major market top where these longer divergences took place along with a lot of the weakening in the momentum that we had seen that would typically pretend of a longer lasting decline.

And that's why we acted because this is historically what major market tops look like. If it looks like this and it's acting like this, then we have to sort of adapt to that idea that that's what this could be. And of course, me being a person with emotions, I don't want to necessarily make these changes or do these things, but I've got to stick to the process even if I think it might be wrong.

and that's how it plays out, is you just want to be on the right side of the probabilities. Then in all my reports, I talk about the probabilities associated with every signal.

So it's not just that, hey, here's a signal and say, OK, yes, here's a signal. Historically, this is the outcome. Either it goes this way or it goes that way X percent of the time. Here's the risk return profile of these regimes. Historically, this is what it looks like. So we have a really good sense historically of, you know, not what to expect in a predictive way, but what we may be getting ourselves into so you can adapt to it. And of course, be open minded, the possibility of reversing that.

Now, how far back, when you're talking about probabilities based on the signals, my next question obviously would then therefore be how far back did you run this study? How many signals has it given, et cetera? Maybe you can frame that out for us a little bit. Yeah, no, great question. So I went back to 1988 only because that's when I had data for all my data sources for all the indicators that I look at.

That was the time I can go back to. Of course, you can get divergences back to the 20s if you wanted to, but that's only one part of it. Then you have other things that I needed the right data for. So in that amount of time, so from 1988 to present, there was 30...

36 scaled cell signals. So those third thirds, one of those thirds, right? But only 10 buy signals, right? So really kind of, again, I want, I'm identifying regimes. It's not really like a,

the trading system or anything like that, it's not going to give you any signals really in bear markets, or at least it's designed not to. So-- RAOUL PAL: Does that imply that you had-- if I'm doing the math on this, you had a lot more scale outs, but you've only had 10 buys. Does that imply that at one point you scaled out and you never bought it back? Or am I misunderstanding you? CHRISTOPHER COLE: Yeah, there was two-- so there was--

The scaling out is just because you have so many more instances that you could scale out and versus only one buy. Theoretically, you push in 100 percent back in when you get in. I see. Yeah, exactly. Theoretically, you can have three sell signals and you're only going to have one buy signal ever.

So that's sort of the ratio. But there's also two instances where you had cell signals that did not progress to a full-on secondary cell signal to get lighter and not very hard. Which one were those, do you recall? Yeah, so one was in the early 90s, 92. And that just was...

Again, breadth was weak for a period of time. We got the trigger. There was really not much of a sell-off. I think maybe more of a sideways kind of market. And then it got back in after that. And the other one was in the summer of 2021.

where breath, if you remember, it was kind of moving sideways, a little bit diverging. And there was some rotation that was going on at the time. If you remember, it was like that value growth rotation, kind of like some weird stuff going on there. And I think that might've influenced it, but, but yeah, that was a false signal. Uh,

But that was the only, you know, the second one that happened in that way. And then you got to buy back, you know, again, relatively quickly. But then, of course, you had a – I had a sell signal in January of 2022. And also in December. So it was kind of like not a whipsaw, but, you know, it was –

I think it was on the right path. But again, the rules are the rules. They follow the rules. And that's kind of how. Yeah, that was it. That was an exceptional period of time as well. So I can completely share your frustration with that period of time. But it was also a spectacular time to be long equities as well. So it's just sometimes risk management can get in the way. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We're too good at it.

Yeah, no, exactly. That's what Frank Teixeira always says, is that that's one of our greatest strengths, but it's also one of our greatest weaknesses, is that we're just too damn good at managing risk. So I'm curious, we've obviously had an explosive rally since then. We talked about the NAD line with all issues being back to highs, the common stock only very close to back to highs. Did you get a buy signal off the lows?

Off the lows, it was interesting. One of the components and piece of evidence that we find around major market bottoms is this element of price discovery where you typically get through not only time, but testing and retesting potentially. That has been present at every bottom in our work back to 1988. It wasn't in this case. We didn't have that.

So there was no buy signal. So that either means that the immediacy of that rebound is an anomaly, right? Or that there's another bottom out there. There's another lower bottom out there.

Either way, this is what the program, you know, did. And, you know, year to date, we're in line with the S&P, but we took an 8% drawdown instead of a 19% drawdown. So, you know, our risk, you know, our risk-adjusted metrics are much better, and you didn't have to sort of go through that pain. Right. But, yeah, no, it's... What about maybe... How would you compare what just happened to...

the COVID decline? I mean, how did your process navigate through the actual decline in COVID and then more pertinently after the low? Because that also was a, we spent no time. We just kind of blasted off because the world was just awash in liquidity at that point.

Yeah, so that one was, it looked like a V on the surface, but in the indicators that we watch, it was a U. So you did have this period where you had this compressed, I'll just say like oversold conditions to keep it simple. You had this period of really compressed oversold conditions that was almost like a coiled spring effect. And it was held down long enough that you can expect to see, you know,

a full-on recovery, a new bull market, if you will. Where this time, you had compression, but it was like momentary compression and it just sprang up. In the past, what I've noticed is that when you

You don't have a great foundation. And I think this goes back to like some of John Roke's work, right? Where the bigger the base, the higher in space, you know, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know how to pronounce that, by the way. I'll never know. I'll never know. Yeah. I think he's the only one that does. So we assume he's doing it right. It's from the famous novel where he goes to meet the Lilliputians.

They refer to him as a Brobegnagian giant. John Rook, literary genius. Yes. But the idea is that you have this time of price discovery where buyers and sellers can sort of agree that this is kind of going wherever it's going to go. And it can't really go too much further. And now we're starting to see it increase. So

It met all the criteria except for the sort of time price discovery time piece of that. So it makes us really suspicious. Yeah, yeah. So so this I wonder, therefore, given your your your heightened focus on breadth, I'm curious how you process and you thought about the fact that we got that Zwei breadthrust that that has this incredible I think it might be 100 percent hit rate of some crazy forward forward numbers in terms of performance for the market. How are you processing that?

I in a very confused way, I mean, I acknowledge that that is a really powerful tool and great track record. It's just it's not part of my process. So it's almost like there's got to be

The way that I've done this is that there's like an order of operation that you would typically see. Typically, tops look this way. Here's how they play out subsequently. In other words, you have a precondition and then you have a reaction to that precondition or triggers from that precondition.

And sometimes, I guess you just don't get everything you want. So that's why I do have an upside. I have an upside safety, basically, that would sort of take an effect pretty soon here. But it hasn't gone off yet. But yeah, no, I saw that and I was like, man, that's really interesting. And I love the Whaley thrust and I love the breakaway momentum thrust, but neither one of those were triggered.

Um, you know, to me, and I've talked to Walter Deamer about this and he's, uh, of course, like I see, he, he's like the authority to me on, on breath thrust, just because of the work he did with the, um, the breakaway momentum thrust. And I think that one's really, really trustworthy and, and, and great. And, um, you know, he, he just said, no, it's, it's interesting. And sometimes they just, some of them trigger, sometimes some of them don't, some of them, sometimes they all triggers, you know, and some of them don't.

You know, I wonder, if you look at the average return of the constituents in the market, so call it 3,000 stocks, since the end of 2021, early 2022, the average stock, even after this rally that we just had, is still down 20% from that peak in 2021, which is extremely abnormal.

And so that's how I think about breadth. That's different. Like, if you look back to the 1970s, that's only happened really four of the times in history, and they all have preceded. Like, the one that really jumps off the charts that really, when you look into the background of what's going on in the market today versus this other example, would be 1998 to 2000. And that's the bear market. You know, it looked like a bull market off the 98 bottom. We had the old economy versus new economy, et cetera. Yeah.

I was at Fidelity at the time, and we had some very, very, very successful, very storied projects.

value managers who just kept buying stocks because they'd never seen them this cheap in their lives. And they just kept buying them because they just... But yet they kept going down. And it was that incredibly bifurcated, fragile market beneath the system. That's what I think about when I think breadth, not necessarily the advanced decline line. And that's the condition we have today. And I'm curious, given your

Like even with semiconductors, like we would think that, I mean, if there's a group of stocks that are like at the forefront of this quote unquote bull market, it would be semiconductors. But the average semiconductor is down like 30% from 2021. Yeah. That's breadth to me. What do you think? It's amazing. And I think that's, yeah, that's another way of looking at breadth. And I see those very same things and I kind of scratch my head. I'm like, this is just a really unusual period of time.

because you have this concentration factor

of the likes we've only seen a couple times in history. So therefore, you have such a small sample to judge, like, what is the outcome going to be? Well, I don't really have a great sample to tell me what's a reliable outcome here. So it could just stay this way for a while. And maybe it's justified this time because these companies are earning so much more money than everyone else, and they're just so dominant. Are you actually saying that this time is different?

I hear you just say that. I'm definitely not because I'd rather not bet on those probabilities. Those are bad probabilities, you know? And that's why, like when we talked about the low in April, like to me and to our system, that would be the anomaly. And I cannot bet on an anomaly with any kind of confidence. I have no probabilities to make that bet. So it's a really hard thing to do when you're in a systematic situation.

approach, which is what we do. So it's interesting. Such a valid point, right? If you don't have the math to back it up, you can't take that kind of risk. Not confidently, you know. I've got a question for both of you, and maybe it's part math and part philosophy, but

Is there a distinct difference or can either of you define the difference between looking at an indice on an equal weighted basis and measuring the trend of an equal weighted index versus looking at the cap weighted and using tools like the advanced decline line? How would you define the difference between looking at breadth in those two different ways? And is there an advantage to the advanced decline line that makes that a part of your process, Vincent?

I love the fact that the advanced decline line gives every stock a vote, right? No matter how big it is, what the market cap is, if it's to the plus side, it's to the plus side by a tick or by $10, right? It doesn't matter. So to me, there's a lot of level setting that goes on when it comes to looking at the advanced decline line.

And I do think that there are definitive advantages to using an equal weighted version of an index. When you're trying to understand what breadth is, then that's something else. Now, if you're really just trying to match a benchmark, then you've got to look at the regular weight, the regular cap weighted way, because that's what you're being judged against.

But it doesn't mean that you can't get information from looking at the equal cap weighted version that you're not going to get from the cap weighted version. And the difference between the two is where you get the most information in combination with the AD line. And that's the divergence that's so powerful to spot. Right. Does the equal weighted version of the index still give one vote to every single stock?

I mean, wouldn't that be true for an equal weight S&P 500? If you look at an equal weighted ETF, I mean, they rebalance periodically. So there are periods where large stocks just become large for a period. And so it's not quite as pure. It's why the average that I probably speak too much about

The value line geometric? Yeah, people make people nauseous hearing me talk about it. But to me, it's the absolute- Dave, you nerd. It's the best measure of breadth that we have available today. And it is the value line geometric average. But there was a time, Tyler, and this is where that disconnect happened for me. And it's why I just stopped really paying attention to it. But there was a time when the advanced decline line would track really closely with the equally weighted indices or the value line geometric average. Yeah.

Because I just think there was a point in time when the structure of the market changed. And so now you went from decimalization, you went from trading on fractions to decimal. So it's a lot easier to be up or down. And we have all the ETFs that basically trade all stocks at once as opposed to just, I like industrial, so I'm going to buy this industrial company. Now we like industrial, so we buy the XLI and that causes...

more uniform breadth movements on a given day. And that's all just intuition to me. I don't have any science to back that up. But there's clearly something different about how the advanced decline represents breadth today compared to how it used to. But what has not changed is that value line geometric average. And you look at it today, and it peaked in 2021. It looks eerily, scarily similar to the 1998

1987 to 1990, 2007 to 2008, even during COVID. There are periods where it's diverged like this and generally it hasn't ended well. Yeah, I think those are really great points, Dave. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so...

So I love the fact that you have some mechanism, again, systematic that will stop you back into the market if, for whatever reason, the system, as you would normally get back in, doesn't get you in. If that happens this time, will that be the first time in your system that you've ever been just automatically stopped back in? Yeah, from this position. Again, anomaly after anomaly after anomaly. I mean, it's kind of like it's hard to get your head around it. But

They can happen. I just don't want to change a system based on anomalies to fit them because then you're overfitting. That's my very next question. Do you think there will be, either in this case or perhaps maybe there's others you can speak to in the past where you did change your system because of it, but will there be a lesson learned from this? Yeah.

or not? Is there anything identifiable where you're like, I can see why I probably missed this? If not this time, have there been instances in the past where you're like, yeah, I need to change my system because this is still a base principle of trend following and it just wasn't in my system before? DAN MOREHEAD: I'm always open to being-- rather than trying to call tops or bottom, I'm more focused on staying

align with where the weight of evidence is heading. So I think there's a certain level of sort of adaptiveness that you have to have. But again, you know, there's, it's a dangerous point to be, you know, overfitting and changing based on something that happened once and may not ever happen again. So I think sticking to the principles that I have, that have been, you know, born out through history and

and study are more important than necessarily one instance when it didn't work out that quite that way. Um, you know, so that's the way I would think about it right now. So like the way you look at it today, no, no lessons learned. And at the end of the day, you have a mechanism to stop you back in anyway. Exactly. And, and, you know, and I still achieve what I, which, what I wanted to do, uh, which is to reduce the risk, uh, and, and reduce the drawdown. You know, that that's the primary, uh,

you know, goal here, because one of the things that I think people overlook, and this kind of goes back to like the buy and hold argument is that the math of compounding totally changes when you take these huge drawdowns, right? And then add on top of that, you know, the timing of

hitting those drawdowns relative to where you are in your retirement cycle and where the market is in its secular cycle, right? Has a lot to do with what your outcome is going to be. And they could be hugely disparate. So if we can control that part of it, then I think there's, you know, the math just works much better for you because the market, you know, the textbooks assume like, yeah, 9% a year every year, but like the market doesn't work that way. It's-

up 20, up 20, up, down 30, you know, and it's like, okay, well, where's my math? You know, that happens. So over a course of then, then what about a lost decade? You know, when you get things like that, that, that totally screws you up. How do you have to gain, then change and adapt to being more tactical than you were, or you just, you know, ride it out. And that's just, it's such a loss in purchasing power. And,

and opportunity costs there. But that actually brings me to a point that I wanted to mention is that this idea of, you know, missing the best days or whatever, that kind of study that goes along to support the buy and hold case, I've teamed up with two other CMTs.

So Ryan Gorman and Sean Keel and like super, super smart guys, super good guys. And we were just sort of having these conversations back and forth and we're like, Hey, why don't we just, you know, write like a white paper on this, you know? And just talk about, talk about dispelling this kind of myth and, you know, adding your own, our own twist to it in terms of, you know, the CMT twist, I guess you'd want to call it that.

But it was just a great experience. But it just underscores, I think, more importantly, the shared passion, camaraderie and intellectual curiosity, frankly, that you get, you know, with with CMTs and the CMT Association. So it's something I'm really excited about. Yeah, that's that's awesome. I think that's.

I did a little, hopefully, I probably did a very small amount of the groundwork that you guys are, I'm sure, going to exceed way beyond what I did. But if you guys want to go to my site, it's under the About tab, and then the dropdown is Philosophy. I did write quite a bit about that. And the folks that don't want us to think about timing the market will tell you about what happens if you miss all the best days. And it's obviously disastrous. The folks that want you to time the market

will tell you, this is what happens to your returns if you miss the 50 worst days. And obviously, it's awesome. But neither one of those are true. But when you put them back together, what you find out is that something like 45 of the 50 biggest days and 45 of the 50 worst days all happened in bear markets.

Yep. We talk about this too. Yeah. Yeah. So at the end of the day, you end up with an outperformance over time with much less volatility. And that's just the truth when you actually consider the full weight of the evidence. Right. I bet.

I've been enjoying as a spectator a lot of the debates between independent RIAs and this urgency that as millennials are building wealth, when they're talking to a financial manager or financial planner, first conversation should be,

This is our plan or our preparedness for the fact that you will definitely endure a massive bear market while you are my client. And here's what we're going to do. Like these once in a lifetime events are happening every decade. So the, the idea that, uh, you could just, you know, ostrich, uh, put your head in the sand and, you know, hope that the recovery happens fast enough so that you can still retire when you plan to, that's just not hope is not a strategy. And, uh,

And I think there's a lot of wise folks out there debating this ultra-passive buy and hold philosophy that works really well in a high liquidity environment, right? Synthetically driven bull markets. Right. Yeah, no, and I think that's a really great point and a point that as all this money moves from the baby boom generation to the younger generations, right?

they're going to sort of expect more from their RA or from their financial advisor because the ETF market sort of told us that passive management without any kind of tactics

is worth basically three basis points. That's a really excellent way to put it. I love that. That's a really good way to put it. How are you earning my 100? Is the question I think people are going to start asking. It's an important question because that's a big part of the equation too over the long term, over 30, 40 years is fees. How are you going to earn those fees for me? If you can earn those fees for me through risk management,

rather than stock picking. I think, to me, the probabilities are much, much better rather than stock picking. Stock picking, you've got to pick the right stocks, buy them at the right time, sell them at the right time, hold them forever if they're good ones, if you identify them, if you're smart or lucky enough to identify them out of the many, many thousands of stocks that are out there. And then you've also got to hold them in the right

proportion to reap the benefit that they're going to give you, but do it in a risk favorable way. There's just so much stacked against you there. To me, if you can do this by managing risk and reward, then you're so far ahead of the game, it's not even funny. Not only that, but your probabilities of doing that are just so much higher.

So well said. Dave, I think from this episode, we need to come back to legendary portfolio managers like Frank Teixeira and remind them that technical analysis is risk management in both directions, right? We're managing the risk of those who might miss out on a great up move as well as managing the risk to the downside. Yeah, exactly.

Vince, it is so good to see you. Right now, I think New York City is starting to feel more like a Floridian swamp, but we should...

We should plan to get together again really soon. I'm thrilled to hear that there's a nice connection across the country and into Canada. Looking forward to reading that white paper. You guys are going to submit that to the Charles H. Dow Award competition? Oh, that's a great idea. We were thinking about that. We also want to have it out sooner than that. It should be pretty much ready soon. So maybe we can have it in the show notes or something. That'd be great. Yeah.

But yeah, it was a pleasure, guys. Again, thanks for having me. Thanks for everything you guys do, both of you. I mean, I see you at the events. I see how hard you work.

And I think it makes a huge difference. And it has made a huge difference in the decade or so that I've seen this real strong effort. So I love it. Thanks so much, Vince. This is the best part of the gig, my friend. So thank you for spending an hour with us. And for all our listeners, fill the gap. What's the best way for them to find you? Point them towards your LinkedIn or ViewRight advisors. Where should we go? Yeah, so it's ViewRight.com.

Dot AI is the website. Show up. Yep. This is part of the cool kids club. What are you, one of the cool guys? I mean, to be true, dot com was taken. So, you know. Ah, okay. And I didn't want to do dot net. You know, I didn't want to do dot net. So it's got to be dot AI. And yeah, no. And on X, they call it now X. I am CMT Randazzo. So.

you know, perfect. Any way you want. Awesome. Thanks so much, Vince. Enjoy the afternoon and we'll see you really soon. My pleasure. Thanks again, guys. Thanks, Ben. Here at CMT Association, 2025 is a landmark year. For the first time ever, the official CMT program curriculum will be included with exam registration. That means if you register for an exam, the corresponding study materials are immediately made available. The CMT curriculum was specifically crafted

to give candidates the skills needed to gain an edge in an intensely competitive industry. Written by professional technical analysts and the best minds in the financial industry, it's the most incredible collection of expert analysis techniques you'll find anywhere. Another exciting development is the learning management system where the curriculum is being hosted.

That's right. The CMT curriculum has gone digital so you can study anytime, anywhere, home, work, your mobile device, while you're binging every season of The Office, or when your kids make you watch the latest video they found on social media. Registration for the June 2025 exam cycle opens January 15th at the early registration price. And with the curriculum now included in your registration, the CMT program is more accessible and

and inexpensive than it's ever been. Head over to cmtassociation.org to learn more today.

Fill the Gap is brought to you with support from Optima. In addition to candidate study of the official CMT curriculum, Optima provides a full video course on all of the material that candidates need to know for each level of the CMT exams. Each course is broken up into modules ranging from 15 to 45 minutes, depending on the complexity and length of the topics being covered. Learn more at Optima.com. ♪