How I learned about Japanese candles

I have often asked myself why a system invented in Japan centuries ago remained unknown in the West for so long? Perhaps the Japanese tried to keep it secret, or did information about it for some other reason not come to the United States? I don't know the exact answer, but it took me years of research to piece together everything that will be covered in this book. Perhaps other researchers simply did not have the perseverance and patience to put together a coherent picture from disparate facts. And a few times I just got lucky. So, in 1987, I met a Japanese broker, a woman. Once, when I was in her office, she was looking through a selection of Japanese stock charts (these charts already used candles, not bars, as was customary in the West). “Look at the window!” she exclaimed, pointing to one of the pages. I asked what she meant, and I realized that the “window” is the same as the gap (price gap) in Western technical analysis: in the USA it was customary to say that the gap was closed, and in Japan that "window closed". From the same broker, I heard other unusual words and expressions related to candles, such as "doji" or "veil of dark clouds." All this interested me greatly, and I spent the next few years studying the information on candlestick analysis that only I could find. And it was not easy to find it: in the USA, almost nothing has been published on this topic yet. After speaking with a Japanese broker, I tried experimenting with candlesticks by hand-drawing charts and analyzing them. Then, in the library of the Association of Technical Analysts, I came across the book Analysis of Stock Price in Japan, translated from Japanese. There were only ten pages for candles, but at least I had at least some material in English. A few more months later, another English-language edition came to me, which already had a much stronger influence on my further professional activity. The office manager from the Association of Technical Analysts, Shelley Lebeck, brought from Japan Seika Shimizu's book The Japanese Chart of Charts, translated by Greg Nicholson. Not only was it in English, but it covered 70 pages of candlestick charts! Reading it, I felt like a wanderer in the desert, who finally reached the oasis after a long exhausting journey. Although the book was a real storehouse of knowledge, it was not easy to delve into its essence. Firstly, the style of presentation was very vague in places, which was probably due to the peculiarities of the translation - and yet I had to master the unusual Japanese terminology. Secondly, the book was written quite a long time ago, 25 years earlier, and addressed to a more experienced Japanese reader in candlestick analysis. But at least I have a fairly extensive reference material on candles. I carried this book with me for months, rereading it, taking notes, trying to apply the methods of analysis described in it to graphs that I drew by hand. I constantly pondered the ideas presented in the book and comprehended the terminology. In one thing, I was undoubtedly lucky: the author Seiki Shimizu himself helped me, answering many of my questions. Although Mr. Shimizu does not speak English, translator Greg Nicholson kindly agreed to be our fax facilitator. In order to better understand candlestick analysis, I began to look for traders who apply it in practice and would agree to share their precious experience. This is how I met the Japanese trader Morihiko Goto. With him, we spent hours discussing the history and use of candlestick charts, and it was extremely exciting! I also arranged for the translation of a large amount of Japanese literature on candles, although it was not easy. Firstly, it was necessary to get the original books, and secondly, to find a translator who not only speaks Japanese, but also understands the intricacies of candlestick analysis. According to some reports, there were less than 400 professional Japanese translators in all of America at that time [1] . But I was lucky: I met a unique person - the director of the Center for Foreign Languages ​​in New York, Richard Solberg, an American who knew Japanese perfectly and at the same time possessed the skills of a technical analyst. He did excellent translations and also helped to get candle literature published in Japan. With his help, I have amassed what is possibly the largest collection of books on candlestick analysis in the United States. Prior to the publication of my first article in late 1989, only a few news agencies broadcast stock trading data in the form of candlestick charts. In the future, their number increased every year, which testified to the growing popularity of candlestick analysis in America and other Western countries.