Are Technical Indicators Useful?

Yes and No. Evidently, there are periods when technical analysis works and the periods when it does not. The reasons can be many – fundamental changes, revised expectations, unexpected news, etc. During the periods when a majority of market participants make their decisions based on past market performance, as a rule, there would be some technical indicators that relatively work well.

Are there best ones? During some periods, some indicators might be the best winners, others – the worst losers. But all things are subject to change. Besides, indicators and markets are often a two-way system, i.e., markets can be affected when a huge number of investors use the same indicator(s). For example, the indicator predicts flat 2 days and then an uptrend for 3 days. If everybody follows, the forecast fails because price would be driven up first 2 days by buying volume and then 3 days flat or down-trending due to taking profit.

Other technical methods. In many cases, due to a semi-stochastic nature of the market, probabilistic statistical methods are able to predict well. Some of the systems that employed such methods is Neural Network (NN). NN often suffers from “over-fitting”. It is bad because over-fitting gives an exact but sometimes wrong result more often than an approximate but correct one. Cycle analysis, as another statistical method, has other advantages and disadvantages.

October 2010 Stock Market Overview: Fundamentals Not Improving, Technicals Not Worsening

Due to a growing expectation that the US Federal Reserve will ease a credit environment to help the economy recovery, the US dollar dropped to several-month lows against most foreign currencies. More dollars may stimulate the economical growth. On the other hand, if the Federal Reserve pumps more dollars into the economy, a falling dollar can negatively affect consumers, businesses, and investors.

A dollar weakness together with the news that the US federal deficit for the 2010 budget year was estimated around $1.3 trillion add some fear of the instability of the system, Gold hit a new high that may also evidence a weak hope among investors for a decent stock market performance.

The US unemployment stayed at high 9.6% rate for the last couple of months. Adding jobless people who are not actively seeking work and people who are underemployed result more than 17%. Such statistics may indicate that the stimulus measures failed to create jobs as it was initially expected.

Some of technical indicators signal a lasting momentum that may keep the recent uptrend cycle for several weeks ahead. However, the third quarter earnings reports may not be so optimistic to sustain an existing stock market evaluation. In this case, major stock market indexes may have a correction if more negative news add the pressure.



The chart above shows S&P-500 forecast for the period from October 11 to October 22, 2010. The calculation has been performed using Neural Network Stock Trend Predictor NNSTP-2. The forecast is a slight uptrend.