How was life b4 TA?

It seems that Technical Analysis (TA) is now such a big part of every traders armoury but how did the early stock traders trade(i.e did Warren Buffet start off using TA?) and does any serious or professional trader trade without using TA.........I'm just curious, hopefully someone will enlighten me.

My neighbour trades short to medium term which for him is 6month to 12 months.

He does his research from reading the FT & other mags like IC & shares, gauging the perceived strength or weakness and then times his selections based on news related items.

I am amazed at his success and how he does it in the first place... but then when i have sat him down and showed him a chart of a stock he was looking at explaining my interpretation he has been equally amazed.

Regards
NB

TA has been aroud for years. Candlestick charting has been used in Japan (originally by futures traders I beleive) and basic Dow theory etc has been around since the early 1900's. I would say TA has been around for at least 100 years in some form or another. Basically, for as long as modern financial markets have existed, TA has been there for those who wish to use it, whether paper based or more recently technology based.

Warren Buffet traded/ invested based on fundamentals. This comes back to the old argument of Fundamental v technical analysis.

IMHO, fundamentals/ value etc are more suited to LTBH investing.
For most shorter term "traders". ie those who speculate on a shorter term price movement (long or short) over usually several minutes to several days/ weeks, I am pretty sure that the vast majority will use TA of one form or another.

so can one swing trade without TA?

Hi Grubs50

I would say no. In order to swing trade you need to know that there has been a swing in price. To do that you would either need to put it on a chart or remember the numbers of what is has done. If you do the latter then what your technically doing is drawing a chart in your mind

but if it is done in d mind using figures based on what can be regarded as supply and demand.......i suppose supply and demand would represent support and resistance on a graph....

I think that swing trading is possible without charts, but certainly the easiest way to assimilate the oscillation of prices up or down is to look at a chart. In the book "How to trade in Stocks" by Jesse Livermore there is a sample of how he used to classify stock prices in terms of upward or downward trend, secondary rally or reaction and so on. He used to colour code his records to help him determine entry and exit prices. The old tape readers traded simply by reacting to the numbers coming off the tape, and I guess all they were doing was swing trading.

I must admit though, I wouldn't fancy it, give me a chart to misread any day.....

It seems that Technical Analysis (TA) is now such a big part of every traders armoury

It may surprise you to know that there are relatively few professional prop traders that use TA. Most cover very specific markets and become so involved that they basically know the levels that matter and the way the product trades