by Jack L. White
What is Technical Analysis
Technical analysis is a technique of selecting stocks to buy based on a stocks price and volume action. The key tool that will help technicians make stock investment decisions is a stocks price chart. Every stock, whether it be Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG) has a stock chart. This stock chart can present information such as the past price performance of the stock, volume (stock turnover) that took place a given time frame, and many other indicators. Ultimately by evaluating all these indicators on the stock chart, technical analysis can help a trader or investor make inferences about what a stock could do later on.
What Technical Analysis Isn’t
In its most pure form, technical analysis is the complete opposite of fundamental analysis. Technicians could care less with the intrinsic value of a business based on metrics like earnings per share, revenue growth, balance sheet analysis, etc. While many times the stocks with the top fundamentals will also have fantastic technical chart patterns, technical analysis is not as concerned with the fundamental side of the equation. A business may have decreasing sales within an extremely competitive environment, but if the stock chart shows a specific pattern, many technical analysts will be looking to purchase the stock to capture any potential upside.
Benefits of Technical Analysis
One of the biggest advantages of technical analysis is that it can provide a great method of risk management. When you buy a stock, the reason you purchase it is because you feel that at some point in the future it will likely be worth a lot more than you purchased it for. According to your time frame (time between when you buy and sell the stock), your profit target for the stock may be different. What you ought to ask yourself prior to into any trade or investment is, “What if I am wrong?” This is when risk management is needed. Using technical analysis as a tool for risk management is a good tool for investors and traders of all levels. Trend lines, moving averages, and support/resistance levels are all tools that you can use on a stock chart that will help you identify when to sell your stock should you be wrong.
A moving average such as the 50 day moving average (most common average used) charts a stocks average price over the last 50 days on a chart and helps to recognize the overall trend (up or down) of the stock. A very simple risk management tool that longer term trend traders use is that they’ll continue to hold a stock provided that it is above its 50 day moving average (see examples at How to Buy Stocks HQ). This is definitely not a hard fast rule, because there are several pitfalls and nuances of such a strategy, which I will look to elaborate further on in the future. Nevertheless for now, the important thing to understand is the fact that technical analysis supplies a good way for a trader to keep their emotions in balance by letting the stock charts decide if you should buy, sell, or hold.
Disadvantage to Technical Analysis
While there are basic rules to technical analysis that most traders agree upon, just following these rules won’t guarantee you make money over the long haul. You will notice that because so many others consider themselves technicians, that many times these rules are made to be broken. When everyone is watching the same thing on a stock chart, you can typically expect the opposite to happen even though it is going against conventional wisdom.
Buying Stocks Using Technical Analysis
Typically there are three things on stock chart that every technician looks for when looking for which stocks to buy: 1. Consolidation or basing pattern 2. Low volume pullback 3. High volume breakout. You will find loads of various basing patterns that technicians consider, but two of the most popular are “cup and handle” and “flat base”. In simplest terms, these are formations that show up on a chart that can give clues concerning where a stock could be headed in the future. Low volume pullbacks show that as a stock goes down in price, less individuals are willing to sell there shares and can be a good sign that the stock will continue higher soon. Conversely a high volume breakout signifies that there’s a huge interest in the stock as numerous institutions (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc) are attempting to buy as many shares as possible because they believe the stock is going higher.
Conclusion
This post is just a basic primer to get you introduced to basic technical analysis. There’s a lot more we will delve into in future posts like frustrations I have come across using technical analysis as well as methods on when you should sell your stock for profit or cut your losses if you are wrong. One thing to keep in mind using technical analysis, is that you have to know what time period (how long you typically hold a stock for after you buy it) you are using to invest. If you’re a short term trader (hold for a day), you could possibly only look at 5 minute charts in which each green and red bar on the chart represents 5 minutes. While if you’re a intermediate term trader (hold for several weeks to months), you’ll want to focus on daily charts (each bar represents 1 day), or weekly charts (each bar represents 1 week). No matter what timeframe you select, mastering technical analysis takes many years of hard work, studying, and discipline to become consistently profitable.