Atop Mountains of Data - Atlantan is Unlocking The Markets Secrets
From the Atlanta Journal and Constitution of July 17, 1988.
Bill Erman may be comfortable in his world of logarithms, golden mean ratios, Fibonacci numbers and hypotenuses, but relatively few Wall street types are.
Bill Erman, a 57-year-old stock market guru who lives in Sandy Springs claims he's stumbled onto something a lot bigger than the ordinary financial patterns Wall Street analysis use to tell the future.
The 57-year-old stock market guru claims he's stumbled onto something a lot bigger than the ordinary financial patterns Wall Street analysis use to tell the future.
And while some Wall Streeters suspect the Atlanta mathematics whiz may need a straightjacket more than a straight rule, others have been impressed enough by Erman's extremely accurate forecasts to fund his research and put food on the Spartan table in his rented Sandy Springs home.
To put it simply, Erman believes there are specific "time barriers" in the stock market, which he perceives as spherical, multidimensional and chaotic.
Actually, it's not possible to explain Erman's views simply and therein lies part of his problem.
Erman may be comfortable in his world of logarithms, "golden mean" ratios, Fibonacci numbers, hypotenuses and mountains of stock market data dating to 1908, but relatively few Wall Street types are. Some dismiss him as a kook or as just another of the horde of self-proclaimed prophets who go to Wall Street hawking magic "black box" formulas to which they claim no one else has the key. Others, like Robert J. Farrell, chief market analyst for Merrill Lynch Capital Markets in New York, have expressed interest in Erman's views, as well as perplexity.
"I found the meeting we had in which you attempted to explain some of your techniques for timing market cycles intriguing and informative," Farrell wrote Erman. "The mathematical rationale for your work was mostly beyond my comprehensive but as a student of markets and historical relationships, the results were impressive."
Erman, who friends say was a wealthy executive before "he got hooked" on market rhythms, claims he's not after great riches as much as recognition and enough clients to allow him to computerize his 15 years of research. He's starting to get some of both, and from some of the best-known names on Wall Street.
"I don't quite understand what he doles, how he goes about it. but one thing I observed is that he's had more than his share of good calls," said Leon Cooperman chairman of the investment policy committee of Goldman. Sachs & Co. in New York. "He's very, very diligent, a hard worker, and he has a great belief in his system." He said Erman's presentation was awesome to watch."
Paul Stuka, a money manager who heads his own $25 million firm in Boston, said after Erman first contacted him two years ago, "I basically told him to get lost as I have with many other 'black box' guys. There are a lot of guys with Quija boards, but he persisted in calling me with-various predictions that I found to be extremely accurate.
"I talked to some people on Wall Street who had the same experience with him. We don't know what he says or why what he says works, but his record is quite good," said Stuka, now one of Erman's 20 clients. "He has not been 100 percent right but he has had a very high hit rate, higher than could possibly be done on chance."
One of those calls, Stuka said, was that the stock market would crash, which it did - 17 days after Erman warned his clients to sell out.
"You want to think, 'Maybe he's lucky,'" Stuka said. "But there's still one part of your brain that says nobody has been able to do this."
Another of Erman's clients, Victor H. Sperandeo, managing general partner of the New York investment firm of Hugo Securities Inc., termed the Atlantan's work "amazing,"
"I was very happy in real estate making a lot of money before I got obsessed," Erman, a 1951 Harvard graduate, said in an interview, in his basement office, full of giant zig-zag wall charts, three-dimensional drawings and books with such titles as "Chaos," "Infinity and the Mind, the Science and Philosophy of the Infinite," and "Metaphysical Themas, Questions for the Essence of Mind and Pattern."
"There is perfection in the market and I believe I am closer than anyone in the world to determining what's really going on in terms of timing," he said.