Technical Analysis Vs Stocks…is There A Connection?
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?
Technical analysis is the study of past market trends to help forecast what future stock prices will be. However, this doesn’t explain the entire connection between technical analysis and stocks. Needless to say, what makes people conclude that the price of a stock is determined by looking at just data and not take into consideration of the overall condition or financial state of a company?
Some of this stems from technical analysis being used by market analysts who can downgrade stock or anticipate higher earnings. Trading stock is influenced not only by the markets daily swings or isolated events, but actually how markets move with time and the fallout from some of these events are cumulative, therefore experienced over time periods.
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.
Technical analysis is much more difficult to explain to the layperson due to the incessantly large amount of jargon involved, much of it to describe shapes in graphs and trend lines that exist. An elbow, or a shoulder, or a host of other terms can all be used to describe the same trend in a graph (in this case, a level market, followed by a steep drop, and another leveling off) which can confuse and put off the typical investor from investing in a company.
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.
