Trying to figure out what any stock, at any given time in the world will do, as far as price movement up or down can be daunting. Well, to help with this quandary there are two different methodologies used. However, the one that has proven most reliable over many decades has been that of fundamental analysis.

The school of fundamental analysis looks at the companies financial prospects, whether the desired results are achieved, and how it stacks up to the competition. Alternately, technical analysis has been used due to its success even though it is primarily unscientific. Well, what's the connection regarding both stocks and technical analysis?

If you can believe it, technical analysis is simply the studying of past market trends to make a determination as to what the future of the stock's price is going to be. But, that still doesn't answer the whole question - what is the whole connection between technical analysis and stocks? More importantly, how can people think they can predict the price of a stock from looking at charts and graphs and not the financial health or condition of a company?

Some of this stems from technical analysis being used by market analysts who can downgrade stock or anticipate higher earnings. Trading stock is influenced not only by the markets daily swings or isolated events, but actually how markets move with time and the fallout from some of these events are cumulative, therefore experienced over time periods.

The utilization of much data is primarily what technical analysis consists of. The monitoring of trading volume charts, older stock quotes, including much more data helps in the development of graphs and charts to help determine how long a particular move in a company can continue and also the specifics of stock market trading.

Comparing technical analysis and fundamental analysis of the same stock market shows that in the short term technical analysis is a short term predictor. Just as the technical analyst reputation has become, of being a short term predictor. Conversely, fundamental analysis is a long term tool that helps predict long term trends in markets.

Technical analysis is much more difficult to explain to the layperson due to the incessantly large amount of jargon involved, much of it to describe shapes in graphs and trend lines that exist. An elbow, or a shoulder, or a host of other terms can all be used to describe the same trend in a graph (in this case, a level market, followed by a steep drop, and another leveling off) which can confuse and put off the typical investor from investing in a company.

In conclusion, the question still remains, "What's the connection between technical analysis and stocks?", how is it determined and on what basis? How can these tools be used daily and made easier to comprehend. Although, technical analysis is not as accurate and can be very subjective, it has been successful so it makes it hard to dispute that it is still a viable tool used in market analysis.