Merits for Technical versus Fundamental Approaches to Investing and Trading

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Investing and trading have been around in various forms since money was invented, but for the purposes of this paper, I would like to look at narrower, goal specific definitions for these terms. Investing is commonly understood in the financial industry as, long term, 1 – 10 years. But trading is could constitute anything from milliseconds upwards. The goal of investing and trading is the same, to make money or to hedge risk. The question this paper would like to investigate are the merits for technical versus fundamental approaches.

Fundamental investing (FA)

Investopedia defines Fundamental investing as:

“A method of evaluating a security that entails attempting to measure its intrinsic value by examining related economic, financial and other qualitative and quantitative factors. Fundamental analysts attempt to study everything that can affect the security's value, including macroeconomic factors (like the overall economy and industry conditions) and company-specific factors (like financial condition and management).

The end goal of performing fundamental analysis is to produce a value that an investor can compare with the security's current price, with the aim of figuring out what sort of position to take with that security (under-priced = buy, overpriced = sell or short).

This method of security analysis is considered to be the opposite of technical analysis.”

(http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fundamentalanalysis.asp)

Technical Analysis (TA)

Investopedia defines Technical Analysis as:

“A method of evaluating securities by analysing statistics generated by market activity, such as past prices and volume. Technical analysts do not attempt to measure a security's intrinsic value, but instead use cha...

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... dice are thrown or the wheel is spun. But over a large number of bets, the gains and losses average out to a result that can be predicted, even though the result of any particular bet cannot be predicted (Fig. 3 . 8 ).

The casino operators make sure the odds average out in their favour. That is why casino operators are so rich. The only chance you have of winning against them is to stake all your money on a few rolls of the dice or spins of the wheel.

It is the same with the universe. When the universe is big, as it is today, there are a very large number of rolls of the dice, and the results average out to something one can predict. That is why classical laws work for large systems. But when the universe is very small, as it was near in time to the big bang, there are only a small number of rolls of the dice, and the uncertainty principle is very important.”

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