New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems (1978): no other book has put so many permanent tools on the platforms of the entire world.
| Period | 1935 – 2021 |
| Background | Mechanical engineering; then real estate and commodities |
| Lens | Mechanical systems on commodities |
| Key work | New Concepts in Technical Trading Systems (1978) |
Who he was
A mechanical engineer who moved first into real estate and then into commodity markets, Wilder approached trading as an engineering problem: define, measure, systematise. In 1978 he self-published a spiral-bound volume full of tables to fill in by hand with a calculator: inside, already complete, were four of the most-used tools half a century later. Our indicators module owes him an entire family.
Contribution
Four tools from the same book, each with its own entry in the catalogue:
| Tool | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| RSI | How strong is the push? |
| ATR | How much does it really move, wicks included? |
| ADX (with +DI/−DI) | Is there a trend, or not? |
| Parabolic SAR | Where do I keep the stop while the trend runs? |
Plus Wilder's smoothing (the slow average that bears his name), used inside RSI, ATR and ADX: the technical signature of the whole family.
What today's students learn from him
- Design, don't improvise — each of his tools starts from one precise question and answers only that: the opposite of the do-everything indicator.
- The tools were born together as a system: the ADX says whether there is a trend, the SAR manages the stop inside it, the ATR sizes it, the RSI measures the push. Studying them separately loses the overall design.
- Robust simplicity ages well: 1978 formulas computable by hand still ship as standard on every platform on the planet.
Study path
The four entries of the indicators module are, in effect, his path:
Related concepts
Links
- indicatori — the catalogue where his family of tools lives
- trader