Colin Nicholson

Colin Nicholson BEc, SF Fin is a private technical investor in shares, author and teacher of technical analysis based investing.

He has a bachelor's degree in Economics from Sydney University and the Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Financial Services Institute of Australasia. In 1995 he was made a Senior Fellow of the Financial Services Institute of Australasia.

He has been fascinated with the corporate world since before he left university in 1965. He has worked for both a large international company and a smaller Australian listed company, mainly as a sales and marketing manager. However, his passion has been the share market. He has invested in and traded shares on the Australian market for more than 40 years since the mid to late 1960s. Since April 1987, he has been self-employed, investing and trading his own money, teaching and writing.

His approach is that of an active investor, looking to take advantage of trends running from several months to several years. He concentrates on second rank industrial shares and a few producing miners, because they are generally capable of greater price appreciation than blue chip stocks.

He has taught both fundamental and technical analysis for the Financial Services Institute of Australasia (later FINSIA and now Kaplan). He wrote the subject notes for E114 Technical Analysis and most of E171 Specialised Techniques in Technical Analysis. As Principal Lecturer for both subjects, he led a team that updated the teaching materials and set assignments and examinations for many years. Although he has passed this role on to others from 2003, he still lectures occasionally in FIN231 in Sydney and was judged Outstanding Presenter for 1997 by student feedback.

He was an early member of the Australian Technical Analysts Association (ATAA). Since 1992, he has been successively Journal Editor, Secretary, Vice President and President. During this period, he provided leadership of a team that took the ATAA from about 50 members to over 1700 when he retired after three years as President in 2000.

He speaks at ATAA meetings around Australia and their annual conferences, where members have several times rated him best speaker. He has also spoken at Australian Investors Association Conferences, where he was also rated one of the best speakers, as well as at their one-day seminars.

Colin has written five books. Building Wealth in the Stock Market and The Aggressive Investor teach his personal investment plan. The Psychology of Investing teaches the common errors and biasses in decision-making based on behavioural finance and much more. Hot Stocks 2007 and Hot Stocks 2008 build on his investment plan by teaching how he assess market risk and how he finds and analyses potential good investments.

Although he has now quit this work to focus on other personal priorities, he wrote regularly about technical analysis and investing psychology for AFR Smart Investor magazine and a column on his market view each week in the Market Wrap section of Tuesday's The Australian Finacial Review. Beginning in 2002 and continuing through 2003, Colin wrote the major articles in the Shares Charting Guide, a quarterly publication that enables him to present a more complete discussion of aspects of charting-based trading and investing than was possible in monthly Shares magazine charting articles.

In late 1999, he started teaching weekend Building Wealth Through Shares seminars around Australia. In the seminars he taught his investing plan, which he has gradually developed over the last 30 years. In June 2000, he presented an intensive version of his seminar in New York.

Colin is a long time friend of Dr Alexander Elder, whose book Trading for a Living is a financial best seller since it was published in 1992 and has been translated into several languages. Dr Elder's book Come into my Trading Room followed in 2002 and it expands on his methods and updates them. More books have followed. Dr Elder's appreciation of Colin's teaching ability led to him inviting Colin to teach with him at Traders' Camps in Fiji and the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean in 2000, in Vanuatu in 2001 and in Macau in 2010 and 2012.

In October 2001, Colin brought the traders camp concept onshore. He ran a traders and Investors camp at Terrigal with Neil Costa, Tony Plummer and Garnett Znidaric.

Colin has also taught a series of seminars on technical analysis for Shares magazine.

Just before New Year 2001, Colin's web site was launched and has been gradually expanded as a free resource for traders and investors. In October 2001, a members' section was added to the web site. This makes most of Colin's copyright material available for members to read and download as a printable file at any time for a small annual fee. New material is added to the Members section each month and new features will be added progressively.

Colin is a great reader of books about the markets, fiction from many countries and non-fiction on a very wide range of subjects. He has a long time keen interest in grand opera, which he enjoys in Sydney and when travelling overseas. He devotes much of his leisure time to bushwalking/trekking often with his wife Rosalyn. Yet he finds time to answer hundreds of emails from readers and students in which he is devoted to helping them along the path that has brought him success and satisfaction.