In support of Umpolung - bit OT on TAIf you want to (perhaps) expand yr horizons, take a look at this article by Clive Maund dated 15 Nov - or don't if you so desire.
Link:
https://www.24hgold.com/english/contributor.aspx?article=3210165466G10020&redirect=false&contributor=Clive+Maund&mk=1
Bit of an excerpt:
Now Try Telling Me That Charts Don't Work
November 15th, 2010
You still sometimes read articles by critics disparaging charting or Technical Analysis as it is more formally known. Sometimes the criticism emanates from fundamental analysts who have maybe tried it and baulked at the time and effort required to master it, and in ignorance take to deriding it. Usually the attacks go along the lines that "the past is no guide to the future" and "stocks move by random walk" etc - one guy wrote to me and told me that "fundamentals will always trump technicals". As late as the 1980's in London a leading investment magazine described charting as "voodoo in the markets". I worked as a Technical Analyst in London in the 1980's which is where I "cut my teeth" in this business, but using books and information I personally got from the States (with the honorable exception of the UK Society of Technical Analysts), which was light years ahead of Britain in this field - I did not learn Technical Analysis from the pompous buffoons who were still at large in London at that time - you could take these guys out in the street and beat them with a carpet beater and clouds of dust would fly off them, that's how stuffy some of them were.
The claim that "the past is no guide to the future" is arrant nonsense, as any good historian will attest, which is why the study of history is not only fascinating but very useful indeed. Everything we do in the present and stretching out into the future is already predetermined and conditioned by what has taken place in the past - you only have to look at the intractable debt mess to see that. Therefore any person armed with an understanding of the past has a much greater ability to predict future events, and this is as true in the world of stock investing as in anything else. Stocks DO NOT move by random walk - very seldom do big moves or major uptrends "come out of nowhere".
ETC, ETC