Dick Stoken graduated in 1958 from the University of Chicago Business School with an M.B.A. and is a member of both the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and the Chicago Board of Trade. He is the author of Cycles (1978) and Strategic Investment Timing (1984). Both books were named best investment book of the year by the Stock Traders Almanac for the year they were published. His third and most recent book, The Great Cycle, was published in 1993. Stoken lives in Illinois and is a lifelong student of "the Great Game of Politics."