George Lane

George Lane was a securities trader and technical analyst who developed the Stochastic Oscillator in the 1950s while working at Investment Educators Inc. in Chicago. The Stochastic Oscillator measures the closing price of a security relative to its price range over a specified period — typically 14 days — based on the observation that in an uptrend, closing prices tend to occur near the high of the range, while in a downtrend they occur near the low. The resulting %K and %D lines oscillate between 0 and 100, with readings above 80 indicating overbought conditions and below 20 indicating oversold conditions. Crossovers between the %K and %D lines provide buy and sell signals. Lane taught the indicator through Investment Educators and it subsequently spread widely through technical analysis education. The Stochastic Oscillator became one of the most widely used technical indicators globally, appearing as a standard tool in every charting platform. Lane is quoted as famously saying 'Stochastics measures the momentum of price — if you visualize a rocket going up in the air, before it can turn down, it must slow down. Momentum always changes direction before price.' He passed away in 2004.