Business forecaster Martin Zweig dies

Martin E. Zweig, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and whose newsletters influenced U.S. investors for a quarter century, has died. He was 70.

He died Monday, according to Zweig-DiMenna Associates, his New York-based firm. No cause of death was given.

Zweig wrote "Winning on Wall Street" and published stock-picking newsletters such as the Zweig Forecast for 26 years, helping start his career in hedge funds and philanthropy. He co-founded Zweig-DiMenna Partners in 1984 and, according to the New York Post, bought a 16-room apartment at Manhattan's Pierre hotel in 1999 for $21.5 million. He also had a residence in Fisher Island, Fla.

"He was a very fine technical analyst, also a very fine money manager, and he put those two together in a profitable manner," Kenneth Safian, the founder of Safian Investment Research Inc. in New York, who worked on technical analysis with Zweig, said in a telephone interview.

Zweig began his career in the 1970s writing investment newsletters, which became the Zweig Forecast that was published from 1971 to 1997, the company said in a statement through Business Wire without disclosing his date of birth.

A regular guest on the PBS television show "Wall Street Week With Louis Rukeyser," Zweig is credited with developing the technical analysis tool known as the put-call ratio, according to his firm. The indicator plots bearish versus bullish options as a way of determining investor sentiment.