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Richard Russell, who shared his technical analysis of stock markets with subscribers through the influential Dow Theory Letters since 1958, has died at the age of 91. He died Nov. 21 at his home in La Jolla, Calif., his family said. He had entered a hospital a week earlier and was diagnosed with blood clots in his leg and lungs "and other untreatable ailments," his family said. He returned home under hospice care.

An adherent of the investing principles of Charles Dow, founder of The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Russell published his newsletter continuously from 1958, never missing an issue.

In his final column, published Nov. 16, he wrote: "I read 10 newspapers a day, but the news is getting increasingly difficult to digest down to something understandable, and the vast array of news sources becomes more and more complex. I can only imagine what the newspapers will look like in 10 years."

In 1969 Mr. Russell devised the Primary Trend Index, composed of eight market indicators that he never publicly divulged – his secret recipe. When his index outperformed an 89-day moving average, it was time to buy. When it underperformed the 89-day moving average, a bear market was at hand. "The PTI is a lot smarter than I am," he said. (The benchmark is unrelated to the Russell 2000 and other indexes maintained by Seattle-based Russell Investments.)

Mr. Russell said forecasting became more difficult as the number of investors swelled and trading became instantaneous. In 1990, at the start of a 10-year bull market, he wrote in Barron's that stocks were entering a bear market that would undo the gains of the previous 15 years.

Richard Lion Russell was born on July 22, 1924, in New York. During the Second World War, he was a bombardier on B-25 bombers in Italy. After the war, he earned a degree in English from New York University.

He was working as a textile designer when he inherited money from an uncle who had died by suicide not long after the 1929 market crash. He read up on the markets in the New York Public Library and became so bullish that, in late 1957, he invested all his money in the market.

In 1958, he began writing down his observations as the Dow Theory Letters and sending mimeographed copies to friends. A bullish article published by Barron's brought hundreds of new subscribers, who paid $30 (U.S.) a year for his biweekly commentary. Now the subscription price is $300 a year, though, as recently as 2011, a two-issue trial subscription cost $1 – the same price as in 1958.

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