(By Chip Anderson )
The Value of Technical Analysis
The reason technical analysis has value is that directional price moves are often sustained for a period of time allowing analysts to detect and profit from the change in price. Even though a technical analyst has many math-based tools to analyze price and volume movement, the process is ultimately an art in the study of human behavior.
Just as the meteorologist can never guarantee a weather forecast, a technical analyst can never be perfectly certain of future price movements since human behavior is involved.
Figuring out the what and when…
All investors are faced with three basic questions with their investments. What to invest in, when to buy and when to sell. Technical analysis provides a framework for investors to methodically select equities and pick times to buy and sell. Emotion, the investor’s nemesis, is greatly reduced in these decisions since the investor can develop a list of ‘what and when’ rules to follow. Rather than ‘buying and hoping for the best’, technical analysts always know how much risk they are taking and know when to ‘get out while the getting is good’.
Only price and volume only…
Only historical price and volume data is used for technical analysis. The underlying premise of technical analysis is that all known information such as what a company does, its financial results, analyst’s ratings, management performance, politics, news, etc. are reflected in the historical price and volume data. This is a powerful concept since it is impossible to gage how these factors may influence future price separately.
It is important to understand technical analysis can only be used to determine the likely direction of future prices. It cannot anticipate news events or how investors will respond to them.
The Goal of Technical Analysis
The graph above is a historical price chart for the company Analog Devices, Inc., ticker symbol ADI. The line represents the price of ADI over a period of a year. The price chart illustrates how prices can move up, down or sideways for months at a time. Technical analysis uses methodologies to help indicate when prices are beginning to change direction. The goal of a technical analyst is to buy an equity when the price chart indicates prices are beginning to move up and then sell when the price chart indicates prices are beginning to move sideways or down.