Although my primary focus is on the fundamentals, I do use Technical Analysis (TA). However, many of my TA-related beliefs deviate from the mainstream. Below is a collection of these beliefs presented in no particular order. The collection is not comprehensive, but it gives an overview of how I think historical price action can and can’t be used.

Note that there is significant repetition in the following list, in that a similar meaning is sometimes conveyed in separate points using different words. Also, I am not stating that my beliefs are the ‘be all and end all’ of TA and should be adopted by everyone. Far from it. What works for me may not work for you, and vice versa. Consequently, if you are able to make good use of a TA method that I believe to be useless then there is no reason why my opinion should prompt you to make a change.

Here we go:

1) Clues about future price action can sometimes be gleaned from price charts, but price charts tell you a lot about what has happened and very little about what is going to happen.

2) All of the useful information that can be gleaned from a chart is available without drawing a single line or calculating a single Fibonacci ratio. For example, you can tell whether a price has trended upward or downward just by ‘eyeballing’ the chart. You can also tell, just by looking at the chart, if a market is extended to the upside or the downside.

3) You can’t gain an advantage in the financial markets by doing something that could be done by the average nine-year-old, such as drawing lines to connect dots on a chart. Note: I regularly draw lines on the charts contained in TSI commentaries, but this is for illustrative purposes only. For example, for TSI presentation purposes I draw horizontal lines to highlight the previous peaks/troughs that could influence future trading and angled lines to illustrate that a market has been making lower highs or higher lows. I never draw lines on charts for my own trading/investing.