Just dropping by asking to see if anyone has a list/recommendations or a link to another website where I could find some insight about the best technical analysis books/courses and seminars.
Help greatly appreciated!
http://www.mta.org/eweb/dynamicpage.aspx?webcode=body-of-knowledge
The certification is probably worthless but I bet the books would be an interesting read.
see my reply in other thread.
^ Bro, You know I got nothing but love for you (no homo), but worthless is far from how I’d describe the CMT. It will only marginally help one in career advancement, but the knowledge gained is something often overlooked by fundamental analysts. While Ks and Qs only come out a few times a year, the market trades daily. Therefore it is a fiduciary duty of an analyst to see what could be lurking inbetween official company releases. Much like you’ve said a stock is only worth what can be paid for it despite formal valuation methods, it is useful to look at the herd mentality. TA focues on just that with momentum, volume, breakouts, and so forth. The psychology of crowds is just as much if not more to blame for stock pricing than a DCF model based on earnings and management guidance.
That’s what I meant – worthless in advancing your career. I have never seen a job asking for this and I assume most people don’t know what it is.
Interesting (perhaps should have said helpful) in becoming a better analyst and making money. All of the really successful value guys I know use technicals. It’s an area I would like to improve upon myself.
I never finished the Pring book, but I thought the sections I did read were helpful.
This is one of the best introduction to Technical Analysis: http://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Candlestick-Charting-Techniques-Edition/dp/0735201811
I spent some time studying TA and I think like 80% of it is junk. Plus stock decimalization and HFT added liquidity have had some effect on the patterns and volume levels. Maybe not with less liquid stocks (like <300K daily avg shares or <1.5B market cap) but companies like GE have a low price with high volume that it seems too difficult to spot large accumulation/distribution.
So in general, I think many patterns are useless on a stand alone basis. The only ones that I find effective are the Bull Flag and Cup/Handle pattern. I think those work really well.
I also think ATR trading systems might actually work. It does seem that stocks are likely to have a breakout when the Hi-Lo spread starts to get tighter than the previous 10-15 bars. Thats what you see in the bull flag where after it moves up a lot it starts to trade in a narrow tight range then eventually moving higher.
I would only look at big volume and things like support/resistance for less than <1.5B cap or <300K share stocks because its going to be a lot harder to hide strong buying/selling power.
Technical analysis is good to confirm a bias you already hold. Good luck using it as the only decision making tool.
Interesting. Are you able to share what sort of technicals they might be using - macro based indicators or equity level trading patterns?
FA is the what. TA is the when. No sense in not using both.