Fundamental or technical analysis?

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Hello everyone,

I've been in finance world for a month more or less and I've been looking for different king of information. Now I'm a mess.

To start with, I would like to ask which analysis do you prefer? fundamental or technical analysis? I've read that some people use fundamental, others use only technical because it's easier and other use both:confused:...What do you think?

Thank you so much,
Leticia.
 
Hello everyone,

I've been in finance world for a month more or less and I've been looking for different king of information. Now I'm a mess.

To start with, I would like to ask which analysis do you prefer? fundamental or technical analysis? I've read that some people use fundamental, others use only technical because it's easier and other use both:confused:...What do you think?

Thank you so much,
Leticia.
Hi Leticia,
Welcome to T2W.

There's no 'right' way to analyse the markets - only what works for you. Most traders - but not all - tend to prefer some sort of TA, especially those that trade in the very short term, i.e. intra-day or swing trade over a couple of days. FA tends to be utilised by investors and position traders looking to hold on to trades for many weeks or months. The primary reason for this is that fundamentals tend not to change a great deal deal from day to day. If you've not yet seen it, this FAQ delves into the two approaches in greater detail: What is Technical and Fundamental Analysis?
Tim.
 
Or in the words of Benjamin Graham,
"In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine".
 
Or Keynes . . .

. . . professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point ofview. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.
 
According to technical analysts, the market discounts everything but acts of god, meaning a technical analysis includes all possible fundamentals by default.
 
The problem with much of technical analysis is that most financial time series (such as stock prices) are pretty close to being a "random walk". The "random walk hypothesis" states that stock market prices evolve according to a random walk and thus cannot be predicted. (This is consistent with the "efficient market hypothesis.") However, stock prices are not *exactly* a random walk. For one thing, there is generally a small deterministic (predictable) component. The implication is that much of technical is an effort to detect a small deterministic trend within a larger random process, and so it often doesn't work very well.

That's why there's been increasing interest in recent decades in analyzing stocks, ETFs, etc., for *cointegration*. It is often possible to find a linear combination of 2 or more stocks, stock market indices, ETFs, etc., which exhibits a large deterministic component. (Much of the "random walk" component is cancelled out.) This makes such a portfolio more predictable. Most algorithmic traders are familiar with "pair trading", in which one trades the spread between two cointegrated stocks, bonds, ETFs, etc. When two such price series diverge, or "get out of whack", one bets on their convergence. This can be a profitable trading strategy. However, pair trading has become so popular that it is now difficult to make money trading stock pairs. (When too many traders are using the same approach, it becomes less profitable.) Traders who use cointegration-based trading strategies (such as myself) are increasingly looking at ETFs, as well as cointegrated portfolios having 3 or more ETFs. In my experience, such approaches can be quite profitable.
 
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Or Keynes . . .

. . . professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point ofview. It is not a case of choosing those which, to the best of one's judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinion genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be.

Or Sinatra......

Do be do be do

N

(Sorry.....but you are all scaring the newbie....:cool:)
 
Hello everyone,

I've been in finance world for a month more or less and I've been looking for different king of information. Now I'm a mess.

To start with, I would like to ask which analysis do you prefer? fundamental or technical analysis? I've read that some people use fundamental, others use only technical because it's easier and other use both:confused:...What do you think?

Thank you so much,
Leticia.

Use whatever feels comfortable for you L.....it is nice when the technicals line up,with fundamentals though.....(y)

N
 
There is a belief that price trend vis a vis the 200EMA comprises TA which adequately reflects FA. e.g. If price is consistently rising over a long period, FA must be the driver behind this, and price's residence above the 200EMA confirms this.
 
Thank you so much!

I'm going to start looking for the best strategy to me. I think, in the begining I'll use technical analysis until I get used to stock exchange and then I will see which strategy I should follow.

See you around the forum!
 
there is not a right or wrong way in trading because what is right for you is not necessary right for me........

There are infinitive ways of trading, in my view a good trader finds a way that goes hand in hand with his own personality.....all the rest is just talk.
 
Thank you Fugazsy.

Now I have to find my way in trading. I've looking for more information to decide which strategy I should follow. Although it's difficult because there are so much information....Wish me luck! :D
 
One needn't choose one over the other. O'Neil in How To Make Money In Stocks suggests using fundamental analysis to determine what to buy and technical analysis to determine when to buy it. This not only saves a great deal of time but prevents the beginner from doing too much damage to himself.
 
Hello everyone,

I've been in finance world for a month more or less and I've been looking for different king of information. Now I'm a mess.

To start with, I would like to ask which analysis do you prefer? fundamental or technical analysis? I've read that some people use fundamental, others use only technical because it's easier and other use both:confused:...What do you think?

Thank you so much,
Leticia.


Its good to have knowledge of both. That makes you a balanced trader. If you are a technical analyst, and fundamentally a currency pair is going bearish, all you need to do is to use your knowledge of technical analysis to look for entry point. Never trade against the trend.
 
Thank you so much.

I have to find which stratetegy it's the best for me but dbphoenix you give the idea of using both. I'll use fundamental to know that to buy and techinal to know when.

Unless at the begining because as you said, there isn't a good way to everyone, it depends on each one.
 
Thank you so much.

I have to find which stratetegy it's the best for me but dbphoenix you give the idea of using both. I'll use fundamental to know that to buy and techinal to know when.

Unless at the begining because as you said, there isn't a good way to everyone, it depends on each one.

I didn't say that "there isn't a good way to everyone". It is true that there are many ways of making money in the market, but they must all begin with an understanding of how the market works. Those who fail never bother to find out.
 
Personally, I almost always favour technical analysis. It applies to almost any given situation while fundamental analysis tends to apply to more temporary situations.
 
Personally, I almost always favour technical analysis. It applies to almost any given situation while fundamental analysis tends to apply to more temporary situations.

The difficulty I have with technical analysis is that stock prices, at least, are pretty close to being a "random walk", which means that they are not very predictable using time series analysis (technical analysis). However, there is evidence that this is less true for assets that tend to be mean-reverting, such as currencies and commodities. As such, I would expect technical analysis to work somewhat better for these asset classes.

There are approaches which can address the randomness problem in forecasting asset prices, such as cointegration and multi-variate auto-regressive models. In these approaches, one does not try to predict the price of a stock, bond, commodity, currency, etc., but rather the value of a portfolio of assets which has favorable statistical properties (such as cointegration). This turns random walks into stationary or mean-reverting time series.

That's the approach that I use in my trading. I trade a cointegrated portfolio of stock index, bond, and commodity ETFs, and so far, it has been quite profitable.
 
. . .That's the approach that I use in my trading. I trade a cointegrated portfolio of stock index, bond, and commodity ETFs, and so far, it has been quite profitable.
Hi IFeelFree,
Welcome to T2W.

You make some interesting points and your approach is certainly a little different to the norm. If you're happy to expand your ideas and put some meat on the bone - I'm sure it will be of great interest to members. So as not to take this thread off-topic, please start a bespoke thread of your own.
(y)
Tim.
 
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