Mr. Mendelsohn, his wife Illyce, and Venturo.

Louis B. Mendelsohn is a world renowned pioneer in the application of personal computers and trading software to the global financial markets.  He is President and Chief Executive Officer of Market Technologies which he founded in 1979 to develop technical analysis trading software for the commodity futures markets.   Mr. Mendelsohn, himself, began trading equities and stock options in the early 1970s.  Then, in the late 1970s he switched to commodities, as both a day and position trader, and developed trading software for the commodities futures markets.
 
In 1983 Mr. Mendelsohn authored a series of ground-breaking articles in Futures magazine in which he outlined his vision for strategy back testing and optimization for personal computers. That same year he introduced ProfitTaker Futures Trading Software, the world’s first commercially available strategy back-testing trading software for personal computers.  By the mid-1980s these capabilities had become the standard in technical analysis trading software for both stock and futures traders throughout the world.

Following the October, 1987 global market crash, first predicted by ProfitTaker in August, 1987, Mr. Mendelsohn took technical analysis to the next generation when he introduced the first commercially available PC software in the financial industry to address the emerging globalization of the financial markets through the application of intermarket analysis in trading software. Several years later, in 1991 he introduced his second generation intermarket analysis software program, VantagePoint Intermarket Analysis Software, which applies the pattern recognition capabilities of artificial intelligence to global intermarket data, and quantifies the effects of related global markets on each other in order to make short term market forecasts.

Since then, Mr. Mendelsohn along with his research and development team, The Predictive Technologies Group, has been focused on the accelerating globalization of the financial markets and has continued to make improvements to VantagePoint’s predictive accuracy, which now makes trend forecasts for more than 600 global financial markets with up to 86% forecast accuracy*. These achievements have been responsible for Market Technologies’ phenomenal growth over the past decade, with thousands of trading software customers in nearly 100 countries worldwide, and three wins since 2004 in the Inc. magazine competition of the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States.

Mr. Mendelsohn is a prolific author, having written dozens of articles on technical analysis and the global financial system in such publications as  Barron's; Futures; The Journal of Trading; Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities; Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine; and the Journal of Commerce.

Following the October, 1989 aftershock exactly two years after the 1987 crash, Mr. Mendelsohn warned traders about the likelihood of more frequent and severe global financial aftershocks and the potential for a full-scale global meltdown. In numerous articles and editorials he called for clearing firms, regulators, and central banks to develop coordinated, worldwide contingency plans before, not after, the onset of a crisis that could ripple through the global financial system and bring about a full-scale meltdown.

In a Journal of Commerce editorial on February 5, 1990 entitled “Build a Global Safety Net”, Mr. Mendelsohn argued that “vital security, clearing and regulatory issues must be resolved to assure the fiduciary integrity of the international financial and banking systems, particularly during times of worldwide financial or political crisis”. In this editorial he went on to caution that “The integrity of the world financial and banking systems necessitates that international coordination and cooperation among the various stock and futures exchanges, central banks, finance ministries, regulatory agencies and international banks be implemented through formal agreements and informal understandings” to replace the “last minute, frantic telephone discussions during a crisis [which] has been the modus operandi”.

Months later in an April, 1990 editorial in Futures magazine entitled “24-Hour Trading: Let’s do it right”, Mr. Mendelsohn warned that “aftershocks following Black Monday's financial earthquake may become more commonplace…as the 24-hour electronic trading systems are fully implemented -- unless serious clearing, security and regulatory deficiencies are overcome”, and that “Global trading on a 24-hour basis, without a real-time global clearing mechanism, presents a major threat to the integrity of the world's financial markets”.

In 1995 in a seminal book entitled Artificial Intelligence in the Capital Markets, Mr. Mendelsohn devoted Chapter 5 to a detailed overview of the global financial system and the systemic risks that would become an ever-present danger for traders. In this chapter, Mr. Mendelsohn indicated that “…few traders comprehend the intricacies of derivatives… Since most derivatives did not exist during the last major bear equities market in 1974, the degree of influence that derivatives might have in precipitating or accelerating a major worldwide financial crisis, more severe than 1987, can not yet be measured”.

Mr. Mendelsohn has been widely quoted in other financial publications over the past quarter-century, including the Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily, has contributed to more than half a dozen books on the global financial markets, has been interviewed live on CNN, Bloomberg, and CNBC, and since 2000 has authored three books on the global financial markets. 

His book, Trend Forecasting with Technical Analysis: Unleashing the Hidden Power of Intermarket Analysis to Beat the Market, released in December 2000, has more than 45,000 copies in print to date.  Chapter 1, entitled “Trading in the Global Economy”, addresses the factors that have brought about the global financial system in the 21st century and cautions traders and investors about the increasing risk that “financial crises can spin out of control quickly, as interdependent financial markets fall, setting off a chain reaction that reverberates worldwide”. His next book, Forex Trading Using Intermarket Analysis: Discovering Hidden Market Relationships That Provide Early Clues For Price Direction was released in March 2006. In this book he discussed the role of the currency and foreign exchange markets in the global financial system.

The following year, in a cover page article entitled “Ripple Effect Looms Large in FX Markets” in the November, 2007 issue of Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine, Mr. Mendelsohn was prophetic in his prediction of an impending worldwide financial meltdown. In this article he warned that “The commodity markets, such as crude oil and gold, have a tremendous effect on other financial markets—including U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, which, in turn, have a powerful impact on the global equity, debt and derivatives markets. They subsequently affect the U.S. dollar and forex markets, which then further influence prices of commodities. This dynamic has already played itself out a number of times since the 1987 crash, including the 1997 Asian currency crisis, the 1998 Long Term Capital Management debacle and the crisis following the 2001 terrorist attack on the United States. Each occurrence underscored the far-reaching implications regarding the fragile stability of the global financial system, itself, amid the ever-present prospect of a worldwide Category 5 financial meltdown”.

Again, in Mr. Mendelsohn’s most recent book published in June, 2008, entitled Trend Forecasting with Intermarket Analysis: Predicting Global Markets with Technical Analysis, he spelled out exactly what actions traders needed to take to protect their wealth and prosper at the onset of a global crisis that he believed would roil the global financial system and precipitate a full-scale meltdown of the financial markets. Traders who have applied Mr. Mendelsohn’s global intermarket software tools have been able to make rational, effective trading decisions during the 2008 global meltdown and are well positioned to take advantage of unprecedented trading opportunities while many other traders and investors have become paralyzed with fear and weakened financially because they lacked the proper analytic tools needed to succeed in the global financial markets of the 21st century.

Mr. Mendelsohn, Venturo, and Abrielle

Because of his expertise and pioneering achievements in the application of computers and trading software to the global financial markets over the past three decades, Mr. Mendelsohn's biography is highlighted in Marquis Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America, Who's Who in Finance and Industry, and in a time capsule at the White House in Washington, D. C.  He has been a full member of the Market Technicians Association since 1988 and a colleague of the International Federation of Technical Analysts.

Born in 1948 in Providence, Rhode Island, Mr. Mendelsohn received a B.S. degree in Administration and Management Science from Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business in 1969, a M.S.W. degree from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1973, and a M.B.A. degree with Honors from Boston University in 1977. 

As an avid collector of antique office technology and equipment, Mr. Mendelsohn has antique typewriters and pre-electric calculating machines (which are early forerunners to today's personal computers) that date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries on display in his private office.  He has also collected classic cars, including his favorite, a 1937 Buick four-door sedan luxo-rod.  Mr. Mendelsohn, his wife of 33 years, and two of his three sons live on a ranch near Tampa, Florida where they raise Paso Fino horses and a variety of cattle and other livestock. 

A comprehensive collection of Mr.  Mendelsohn's published articles and books is available for your review at Louis Mendelsohn's Library.

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