Marc Chaikin

Marc Chaikin began as a stock broker in 1965.[4] He became head of the options department at Tucker Anthony & RL Day during the 1970s. Following his employment there, Chaikin bought a seat on the NYFE, where he traded futures contracts.[5] In 1980 Chaikin began developing proprietary stock market indicators and in 1982 he joined the firm Drexel Burnham Lambert. That year he began hosting a regular segment on the Financial News Network—the original incarnation of CNBC.[1] It was from this point forward that he began to use early PCs to refine and execute his trading strategies based upon original economic indicators and computer algorithms.[6] Later he would found the firm Bomar Securities LP, which sold to Instinet in 1992.[2] Following the sale he would become a senior vice-president at the Instinet brokerage house.[7]

Chaikin spent much of his career developing computerized stock selection models for money managers. He is most known for his creation of the first real-time analytics workstation for portfolio managers and other stock traders, proprietary analytics that are currently a key part of the Thomson Reuters institutional workstation.[8] He is especially recognized for his development of the Accumulation/Distribution Line indicator (ADL).[9] Chaikin also developed the Chaikin Volume Accumulator (VAC) indicator.[10] The two major indicators associated with the ADL are the Chaikin Oscillator and the Chaikin Money Flow indicators, both of which have been heavily used on Wall Street since their inceptions. Chaikin has asserted two of his philosophies as "I have always believed that earnings drive stock prices" and "I have a theory on Wall Street: bad things happen to companies that are over-valued, good things happen to companies that are fairly valued or cheap".[4]

In the late 2000s, Chaikin started the company Chaikin Stock Research, in order to provide professional grade stock tools to individual investors.[11] As founder and CEO of the firm he has appeared on several national news networks including CNBC[12] and Fox Business.[13] In 2011 and 2012 he was noted in the media for his bullish optimism for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the stock market in general.[14][15]