Finance Literacy

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?

Well, part of the reason that technical analysis is utilized by some market analysts is that, although one would think that statistically speaking a trading day on the stock market should only be influenced by that day’s events and treated like an independent event, the reality is that most market movement trends over time and the full impact of one event (a downgrade of the stock by an analyst or a movement of earnings higher than expected by the same analysts) is never isolated to one day.

As a result, technical analysis utilizes tons of data including old stock quotes, trading volume charts, and a host of other data, to develop charts and graphs that work to determine exactly how long the impact of a move in a company will persist and impact the stock market trading of a particular issue.

Comparing technical analysis and fundamental analysis of the same stock market shows that in the short term technical analysis is a short term predictor. Just as the technical analyst reputation has become, of being a short term predictor. Conversely, fundamental analysis is a long term tool that helps predict long term trends in 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.

In conclusion, the question still remains, \”What’s the connection between technical analysis and stocks?\”, how is it determined and on what basis? How can these tools be used daily and made easier to comprehend. Although, technical analysis is not as accurate and can be very subjective, it has been successful so it makes it hard to dispute that it is still a viable tool used in market analysis.