I think there's something to technical analysis, but am skeptical it is the be-all / end-all. Consider this: 1. The dollar is a mildly inflationary currency,

I think there's something to technical analysis, but am skeptical it is the be-all / end-all. Consider this: 1. The dollar is a mildly inflationary currency, by design. (though recent events show us that sometimes it is more mildly inflationary than others.) The fed engineers the dollar to be inflationary so people don't park their value in dollars in bank accounts. The modern concept of a currency is that it circulates. Liquidity is generally believed to be good for an economy. So... over the long run you'll always have inflation that, all other things being equal, will cause security prices to go up. I think that part of econometrics is not astrology. 2. Many of the metrics people commonly use, notably the previous 30, 90 or 180 day averages and when they cross each other are tied to real events. Publicly traded companies publish quarterly results, so it always seemed to me that these averages have something to do with the aggregate sentiment regarding a security's performance (i.e. - the wisdom of the crowd will lift or lower a security's stock price based on the crowd's aggregate interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative aspects of that company's behaviour.) Does this mean it's a science and not astrology? I say "Largely, but not completely," as there are still numerous fools out there. And maybe there are whales out there trying to tilt the market for later financial gain? And sometimes people are just wrong when they interpret a financial statement. 3. But there are higher order effects. Everyone seems to know about basic quantitative measurements and it's not hard to find people to analyze a security quantitatively. So... if everyone is using the same metrics, then shouldn't everyone come up with the same buy/hold/sell signals? Of course not. Not everyone has the same risk profile or understanding of the context of the markets (i.e. - you don't have to be an insider to know what the macro-economic situation is, and there are a lot of insiders.) That part of technical analysis may seem like astrology because people are telling you what they think will happen based on their own view of the market, the economy or a particular security, but they're not telling you how they came up with their analysis criteria. I don't think it is astrology, because somewhere, someone is making a decision based on what they think are rational reasons. But you don't know what they are, so like an astrologer of old, you're left trying to decipher the relationship between causes and effects and people often see relationships between the two that really aren't there (especially if they have small data sets.) 4. And there are probably some people out there who are buying/holding/selling at random. Maybe there are enough of them to affect the popular technical indicators. So... is technical analysis just stock market astrology? No. Not at it's core. But without sufficient information about what market participants are thinking, it may be indistinguishable from astrology in many cases.