What’s The Connection? Stocks And Technical Analysis
In making determinations as to what the stock markets worldwide are going to do in terms of how prices move, there are two distinct schools of thought about analysis of companies and their investment prospects. The typical school of thought, and one that has been successful over the last decades has been the school of fundamental analysis.
Fundamental analysis views not only the financial opportunities of a company, but also the likelihood of accomplishing these goals in respect to their competitors. Technical analysis, on the other hand, has been successful in use, but not very structured or scientific. Thus, the question again arises, what is the connection between stocks and technical analysis?
Simply put, technical analysis studies past trends in the market. These trends are then used to help figure out what a future of a stock’s price may be. However, this entire question with regard to the connection between stocks and technical analysis is still unanswered. What allows people to think that the price of stocks can be predicted by just looking at graphs and chart? Doesn’t the companies overall condition and its financial outlook help in determining or predicting stock prices?
The primary reason that technical analysis is used by some market analysts is because it can be used subjectively. The analysts can downgrade a stock and or anticipate higher earnings. One would think that from a statistical standpoint, a regular trading day would only be swayed by the daily activities and independent of anything else that has previously occurred. The truth is that over time market movements occur and trends develop. The movements made and the events that occur are not really isolated at all to one day, but are usually cumulative over a period of time.
Therefore, technical analysis makes use of a lot of diverse data, including trading volume charts, old stock quotes, and much more. This data is then in turn used to look at particular issues which help in developing graphs and charts. These then help in determining the length of the impact of a move in a company will endure and also the outcome that it has on stock market trading.
In many cases, a side by side comparison of a fundamental analysis and a technical analysis of the same stock market issue have yielded results in which the technical analysis has been more able to predict the short term ebbs and flows of a particular company. However, the fundamental analysis works on a longer term basis, and so the technical analyst has earned a reputation of being a \”short\” predictor rather than a \”long\” predictor in the markets.
Due to complexity of the language and terminology used technical analysis can be quite off putting to laypeople who may not understand this verbiage. Since graphs and trend lines involve this terminology and it can sometimes be ambiguous. Many different terms can be used to denote the same trend on a graph and this can cause confusion of the typical investor who may want to invest. For example, a shoulder or an elbow can denote the same thing in a trend on a graph. Talking about leveling and drops in regard to market fluctuations can be quite intimidating to a general investor.
Ultimately, many in the investment community are still asking the question \”What basis can we make the connection between technical analysis and stocks?\” in terms of how that type of analysis can be instituted for everyday use. The reality is, technical analysis is imprecise, open to wild interpretation in some cases, and ultimately serves the purposes of the people that use it. However, given the level of success with the tool, it’s unarguable that technical analysis can be a legitimate market analysis tool.
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