Gerwin Griffioen's Technical Analysis Pages

Griffioen, G.A.W. (2003), "Technical Analysis in Financial Markets", PhD thesis, University of Amsterdam.

Acknowledgements

This thesis is the result of four years of research as a Ph.D. student at the Center for Nonlinear Dynamics in Economics and Finance (CeNDEF) at the Department of Quantitative Economics of the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics of the University of Amsterdam. During these past four years my bank account followed the stock market in its up and down swings. Luckily, the peaks and throughs in my research were steadily rising. This thesis would not have been written without the encouragement, help and support of numerous people, whom I like to thank here.

First of all, I thank my supervisors Cars Hommes and Peter Boswijk. Without Cars I would never have started my Ph.D. in economics. He convinced me to start my career first in academia instead of using my knowledge in business. I thank him for this opportunity. Next, I thank Peter for his interest in and many contributions to my research. I appreciate our regular meetings in discussing my work.

I want to thank the other members of my Ph.D. committee, Jaap van Duijn, Philip Hans Franses, Frank de Jong, Blake LeBaron, Florian Wagener and Claus Weddepohl, for reading an earlier version of the manuscript.

I thank my Italian Ph.D. colleague Sebastiano Manzan, with whom I shared an office and the frustrations of doing research for four years. Next I thank the people in the CeNDEF group, Jan Tuinstra, Cees Diks, Sander van de Hoog, Henk van de Velden and Roy van der Weide. Also I thank the many other people at the Department of Quantitative Economics, Frank Kleibergen, Dawit Zerom, Maurice Bun, Antoine van der Ploeg, Noud van Giersbergen, Angela van de Heerwaarden, Cees Jan van Garderen and Jan Kiviet. I thank the people of the cocoa-trading firm Unicom International B.V., Bart Verzaal and Guido Veenstra, for providing me the data used in Chapter 2 and for keeping me informed of all what was happening in the cocoa markets.

Finally, I thank my mother and my father for always encouraging and supporting me. They gave me the opportunity to study at the university and I will always be grateful for that. Thanks to my sister Siemone, who followed me in studying econometrics.