In finance, technical analysis is an analysis methodology for forecasting the direction of prices through the study of past market data, primarily price and volume. Behavioral economics and quantitative analysis use many of the same tools of technical analysis, which, being an aspect of active management, stands in contradiction to much of modern portfolio theory. The efficacy of both technical and fundamental analysis is disputed by the efficient-market hypothesis, which states that stock market prices are essentially unpredictable, and research on whether technical analysis offers any benefit has produced mixed results.
The relative strength index (RSI) is a technical indicator used in the analysis of financial markets. It is intended to chart the current and historical strength or weakness of a stock or market based on the closing prices of a recent trading period. The indicator should not be confused with relative strength.
In stock and securities market technical analysis, parabolic SAR is a method devised by J. Welles Wilder, Jr., to find potential reversals in the market price direction of traded goods such as securities or currency exchanges such as forex. It is a trend-following (lagging) indicator and may be used to set a trailing stop loss or determine entry or exit points based on prices tending to stay within a parabolic curve during a strong trend.
MACD, short for moving average convergence/divergence, is a trading indicator used in technical analysis of stock prices, created by Gerald Appel in the late 1970s. It is designed to reveal changes in the strength, direction, momentum, and duration of a trend in a stock's price.
In financial technical analysis, momentum (MTM) and rate of change (ROC) are simple indicators showing the difference between today's closing price and the close N days ago. Momentum is the absolute difference in stock, commodity:
A currency pair is the dyadic quotation of the relative value of a currency unit against the unit of another currency in the foreign exchange market. The currency that is used as the reference is called the counter currency, quote currency, or currency and the currency that is quoted in relation is called the base currency or transaction currency.
The commodity channel index (CCI) is an oscillator originally introduced by Donald Lambert in 1980.
In finance, a trading strategy is a fixed plan that is designed to achieve a profitable return by going long or short in markets. The main reasons that a properly researched trading strategy helps are its verifiability, quantifiability, consistency, and objectivity.
In technical analysis of securities trading, the stochastic oscillator is a momentum indicator that uses support and resistance levels. George Lane developed this indicator in the late 1950s. The term stochastic refers to the point of a current price in relation to its price range over a period of time. This method attempts to predict price turning points by comparing the closing price of a security to its price range.
The average directional movement index (ADX) was developed in 1978 by J. Welles Wilder as an indicator of trend strength in a series of prices of a financial instrument. ADX has become a widely used indicator for technical analysts, and is provided as a standard in collections of indicators offered by various trading platforms.
The Vortex Indicator is a technical indicator invented by Etienne Botes and Douglas Siepman to identify the start of a new trend or the continuation of an existing trend within financial markets. It was published in the January 2010 edition of Technical Analysis of Stocks & Commodities.
Currency strength expresses the value of currency. For economists, it is often calculated as purchasing power, while for financial traders, it can be described as an indicator, reflecting many factors related to the currency; for example, fundamental data, overall economic performance (stability) or interest rates. It can also be calculated from currency in relation to other currencies, usually using a pre-defined currency basket. A typical example of this method is the U.S. Dollar Index (USDX).
The Relative currency strength (RCS) is a technical indicator used in the technical analysis of foreign exchange market (Forex). It is intended to chart the current and historical strength or weakness of a currency based on the closing prices of a recent trading period. It is based on Relative Strength Index and mathematical decorrelation of 28 cross currency pairs. It shows relative strength momentum of selected major currency.
The true strength index (TSI) is a technical indicator used in the analysis of financial markets that attempts to show both trend direction and overbought/oversold conditions. It was first published William Blau in 1991. The indicator uses moving averages of the underlying momentum of a financial instrument. Momentum is considered a leading indicator of price movements, and a moving average characteristically lags behind price. The TSI combines these characteristics to create an indication of price and direction more in sync with market turns than either momentum or moving average. The TSI is provided as part of the standard collection of indicators offered by various trading platforms.
The price action is a method of billable negotiation in the analysis of the basic movements of the price, to generate signals of entry and exit in trades and that stands out for its reliability and for not requiring the use of indicators. It is a form of technical analysis, since it ignores the fundamental factors of a security and looks primarily at the security's price history. What differentiates it from most forms of technical analysis is that its main focus is the relation of a security's current price to its past prices as opposed to values derived from that price history. This past history includes swing highs and swing lows, trend lines, and support and resistance levels.
Smart money index (SMI) or smart money flow index is a technical analysis indicator demonstrating investors' sentiment. The index was invented and popularized by money manager Don Hays. The indicator is based on intra-day price patterns.
Currency strength index expresses the index value of currency. For economists, it is often calculated as purchasing power, while for financial traders, it can be described as an indicator, reflecting many factors related to the currency; for example, fundamental data, overall economic performance or interest rates. It can also be calculated from the currency in relation to other currencies, usually using a pre-defined currency basket. A typical example of this method is the U.S. Dollar Index. The current trend in currency strength indicators is to combine more currency indexes in order to make forex movements easily visible. For the calculation of indexes of this kind, major currencies are usually used because they represent up to 90% of the whole forex market volume.
In foreign exchange market, synthetic currency pair or synthetic cross currency pair is an artificial currency pair which generally is not available in market but one needs to trade across those pairs. One highly traded currency, usually United States dollar, which trades with the target currencies, is taken as intermediary currency and offsetting positions are taken on target currencies. The use of synthetic cross currency pairs has become less common with wide availability of most common currency pairs in the market.
In finance, MIDAS is an approach to technical analysis initiated in 1995 by the physicist and technical analyst Paul Levine, PhD, and subsequently developed by Andrew Coles, PhD, and David Hawkins in a series of articles and the book MIDAS Technical Analysis: A VWAP Approach to Trading and Investing in Today's Markets. Latterly, several important contributions to the project, including new MIDAS curves and indicators, have been made by Bob English, many of them published in the book.
Volume Analysis is an example of a type of technical analysis that examines the volume of traded securities to confirm and predict price trends. Volume is a measure of the number of shares of an asset that are traded in a given period of time. As one of the oldest market indicators used for analysis, sudden changes in volume are often the result of news-related events. Commonly used by chartists and technical analysts, volume analysis is centered on the following ideas:
