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Technology Stocks : THQ,Inc. (THQI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond James Norris who wrote (3047)	1/14/1998 2:45:00 PM
From: Sigmund	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 14266

Just my opinion on MA's. Didn't say I didn't believe in TA. I do. Just don't believe that MA's themselves have much value in predicting stock movements. MA's are a strange type of TA. TA as I understand it tries to form an opinion about investor psychology based on the trading patterns. This makes sense to me. But what is there about a 21 day moving average that tells us something about investor psychology? Why would a 21 day moving average be more or less revealing than say a 22 or 20 day moving average. This is not at all intuitive to me. Obviously MA's show something. When a stock crosses a moving average it shows that a movement is intense to a certain degree. As such it helps with discipline....realizing that a stock is really and truly moving in a certain direction. The question is do crossings or failure to cross a moving average help predict future movements of the stock? If you think they do fine. If you were to tell me that you made a lot of money using this one tool I would say great and I would like to take a look because I would like to do the same. I realize that many people believe in MA's and that for me to question this is heresy. But that doesn't make me wrong. I wish I had the reference to the Merrill Lynch study. It was a very long time ago. I think I remember reviewing the study and concluding that it was valid but I may be filling in gaps here it was so very long ago I think in the mid eighties but I am not even sure of that. It might have been even earlier much earlier. I once was a registered rep and took the NASDAQ exam so it might have been back then which was a very very long time ago. But I think it was the mid eighties. Are you aware of any statistical studies that confirm the predictive power of MA's? I am willing to have my mind changed on this. Certainly MA's may not work (statistically significant) in general but still work for THQI if a lot of THQI people believe in them. Perhaps Vic has an opinion on this.