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Pastimes : The Death of Silicon Investor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: E. Charters who wrote (893)	9/29/2002 9:04:51 PM
From: Toby Zidle	Respond to of 1003

Surely you jest. Being dumb is what most stock analysts do best is it not? As far as analysts go, there's "them" (who work for Merrill, Salomon, Morgan, etc.) and there's "me" (who works for 'me'). I don't care if "them" analysts are dumb. I don't particularly listen to them, except that I note that, as much as they're attacked for their seeming conflicts of interest, their opinions are still a major market force. When it's analyst "me" that's dumb, that hurts. I try to pay attention to it. In a sense that is what TA is, a "dumb" analysis too. It is equally stupid to pretend we know the reasons a stock goes up or down. In the end it is the cumulative reasons of a lot of smart and dumb people. What may be really dumb is to pretend we can know in advance what they will do exactly. I think there's a misconception that TA is predictive or that it "knows" the reason a stock goes up or down. Granted that I've talked of FFTs being predictive, but that's a special case. Generally speaking, TA is diagnostic rather than predictive. If you have been healthy, but suddenly develop a temperature of 100, the thermometer diagnoses that your healthy trend is likely to be in danger. It doesn't predict a future 102 or 104. It doesn't know why you have a temperature of 100. I think that's what TA does, takes your stocks' temperatures. If you're feeling sick, it's still up to you to go to the doctor.