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To: Jim McMannis who wrote (48804)	2/25/1998 1:39:00 PM
From: Burt Masnick	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 186894

Jim, In my experience the people who do well purely with technical analysis have developed a supersensitive feel for market patterns, regardless of whether the prediction is up or down. I have seen some do it well, but the proportion of those who do it well compared to those who attempt it is pretty small. A fellow named Jack Raines used to post here and he was very good. He was driven off by antagonistic and sarcastic posters who are long gone, but he never came back. TA appears to me to be an art involving charting, historical patterns of behaviour, investor pyschology and market mechanisms like expiration dates and announcements. If TA were purely mathematical, there would be purely mechanical (ie computerized) trading systems that are very effective and, from a few years playing commodities, the purely mechanical systems usually fail. What I meant by the statement is that the market is not PURELY mathematical (predicatability is well under 100%). A TA purist doesn't want to know the actual name and business that the symbol represents. Just show him or her the charts and a decision on the future direction is possible. I personally check the charts, but make my decisions on fundamentals. I use the charts to try to pick buy points. But those that don't use charts get by just fine. Some just buy the dips and are doing about the same thing as the chartists. That might even be why charting works. One thing is for certain. It is fairly schizophrenic to be both a fundamentalist and a technician.