Technical Analysis Principles

Technicians say that a markets’s price reflects all relevant informations, so their analysis looks more at “internals” than at “externals” such as news events. Price action also tends to repeat itself because investors collectively tend toward patterned behavior – hence technicians ‘focus on identifiable trends and condition. The study of technical analysis is based on the following three broad principles:

The Market Discounts Everything

A major criticism of technical analysis is that it only considers price movement, ignoring the fundamental factors of the company. However, technical analysis assumes that, at given time, a stock’s price reflects everything that has or could affect the company

– including fundamental factors. Technical analysts believe that the company’s fundamentals, along with broader economic factors and market psychology, are all priced into the stock, removing the need to actually consider these factors separately. This only leaves the analysis of price movement, which technical theory views as a product of the supply and dement for particular stock in the market.

Price Moves in Trend

In technical analysis, price movements are believed to follow trends. This means that after a trend has been established, the future price movement is more likely to be in the same direction as the trend that to be against it. Most technical trading strategies are based on this assumption.

History Tends To Repeat Itself

Another important idea in technical analysis is that history tends to repeat itself, mainly in terms of price movement. The repetitive nature of price movements is attributed to market psychology; in other words, market participants tend to provide a consistent reaction to similar market stimuli over time. Technical analysis uses chart patterns to analyze market movements and understand trends. Although many of there charts have been used for more than 100 years, they are still believed to be relevant because they illustrate patterns in price movements that often repeat themselves.

Not Just for Stocks

Technical analysis can be used on any security with historical trading data. This includes stocks, futures and commodities, fixed-income securities, forex, etc. In this tutorial, we’ll usually analyze stocks in our examples, but keep in mind that these concepts can be applied to any type of security. In fact, technical analysis is more frequently associated with commoditized and forex, where the participants are predominantly traders.