Technical Analysis

Technical analysis is a security analysis technique that claims the ability to forecast the future direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. In its purest form, technical analysis considers only the actual price and volume behavior of the market or instrument. Technical analysts, sometimes called "chartists", may employ models and trading rules based on price and volume transformations, such as the relative strength index, moving averages, regressions, inter-market and intra-market price correlations, cycles or, classically, through recognition of chart patterns.

Technical analysis stands in distinction to fundamental analysis. Technical analysis "ignores" the actual nature of the company, market, currency or commodity and is based solely on "the charts," that is to say price and volume information, whereas fundamental analysis does look at the actual facts of the company, market, currency or commodity. For example, any large brokerage, trading group, or financial institution will typically have both a technical analysis and fundamental analysis team.

Technical analysis is widely used among traders and financial professionals, and is very often used by active day traders, market makers, and pit traders. In the 1960s and 1970s it was widely discredited by academic mathematics. In a recent review, Irwin and Park reported that 56 of 95 modern studies found it produces positive results, but noted that many of the positive results were rendered dubious by issues such as data snooping so that the evidence in support of technical analysis was inconclusive; it is still considered by many academics to be pseudoscience.

Academics such as Eugene Fama say the evidence for technical analysis is sparse and is inconsistent with the weak form of the efficient market hypothesis. Users hold that even if technical analysis cannot predict the future, it helps to identify trading opportunities.