Susan Berger is a very happily retired veteran technical market analyst, who overcame crushing obstacles in her tragically unstable early years to eventually forge an impressive reputation as one of Wall Street’s foremost practitioners of the brand of market analysis first described by Robert D. Edwards and John Magee in their classic post-WWII textbook, “Technical Analysis of Stock Trends.” 

Despite the seemingly insurmountable disadvantages of an orphaned youth and dire economic straits, Susan, born in 1950 and homeless, somehow found the grit and determination to grab a golden an opportunity at age 18, when a friend’s mother found her an unskilled “chartist’ job at subsistence wages in the offices of John Magee Inc. in Springfield, MA. She had escaped the wallet factory. There were twists and turns aplenty along the way, but over the next 25 years, Susan embraced the study of charts and markets and — more quickly than anyone, especially Magee, thought possible — turned herself into the firm’s irreplaceable asset. The only one, besides the great pioneer of technical analysis himself — who could consistently and reliably not only create Magee charts, but analyze them to find strong stocks to recommend to subscribers of the John Magee Service.  

All good things end, however. When the Magee, his health failing, sold the business to a Boston investor, Susan found herself moving to the big city and successfully carrying on the Service herself — even expanding it into institutional research sales — for a changing retinue of partners, under the aegis of Buttonwood Securities.