Technical Analysis for picking Stocks

Anyone here have experience with using Technical Analysis to analyze and predict stock prices?  How well does it work?

Roll dice instead and save yourself the time.

Works better than not knowing what you're doing.

The end.

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It doesn't.  Period.  Anyone who says otherwise is either: a) selling something, or b) lucky.  You'll see some investors who claim to use TA to make money, and a few might even be telling the truth.  It doesn't mean their flavor of TA works, it means that if you throw a million idiots all picking stocks at the market at once, at least five or six will make money on the basis of chance alone.

The best strategy for coming out ahead in the stock market is to build a diversified -- really diversified, not just "oh look I hold four different index funds" diversified -- portfolio of assets that cover a broad range of risks, pay close attention to and minimize your fees and tax implications (don't be afraid to sell at a loss to offset gains, and don't do dollar cost averaging because the broker fees will fucking murder you), and don't fucking touch it for the next twenty years except to re-balance back to your target asset allocations.

In the long run you can earn an average of 8-9% per year without a huge amount of risk.

Watch Pi

Become a multimillionaire in the Internet boom and cash out before the market crashes

Start a program on TV telling people to buy certain stocks and then sell when those stocks go high

Spend all your money playing Blackjack

Sometimes I watch technical analysts talk on TV and it seems like reading tea leaves or something.  They even have names for different kinds of shapes they see in the graphs, such as "this is a head-and-shoulders".

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Companies buy stock wholesale and don't care if a couple people invest a tiny amount of money into certain stocks, which will be sold anyway.  Cramer is essentially running a scam on everyday investors.

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Inverted hammer ftw

It's a very long and boring process that begins in college and ends with you spending 8 hours a weekday in a cubicle.

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I tend to disagree with you. If one really put forth the effort in reading companies annual financial reports, you can make a pretty good prediction as to how well some companies will do based on internal financial leverage, in combination with what sector the company specializes in. You don't have to just "diversify and let fly". 8-9 percent relatively risk free? Dude, you're better off buying tax-exempt state muni bonds. If you know what you're doing, you can see a lot more than 8-9 percent.

OP, take a financial mathematics course at your college.

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That's fundamental analysis, not technical analysis. 

I agree, if you devote a large amount of time to it and you're very good and just a little lucky, double-digit returns aren't at all out of reach, even in bad markets, but you generally have to accept volatility as your returns increase.  Strictly speaking, any returns over the RFIR is going to force you to accept volatility.  For non-pros, 8-9% will generally give growth that'll stay ahead of MMA+inflation with low enough volatility that they don't flip their shit in a market downturn.

Government bonds in general are good IF your income is high enough that you need the tax savings.  You'd have to have a really high income base and a whole load of extra income dedicated to investments in tax-free bonds to get you even with an 8-9% return though.  Plus, with the state ones, you need to worry about how mobile you are (hope your job doesn't move you out-of-state) if you want to realize the tax advantage completely.

Regardless, as to the OP's question, TA is bullshit and no reputable financial mathematics course will teach a single fucking thing about it other than that fact.  Most financial mathematics these days are focused on risk control rather beating the market.

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http://web.mit.edu/alo/www/articles.html