The following simulation is based on a presentation that I attended in the 1990s.  I was an investment junkie back then.  I sat down, and I listening to people speak about their ideas on making money - on television and sometimes live.  The presenter in this case was trying to explain that investment success is sometimes a matter of chance.  He had people in the audience stand up.  He asked them to guess heads or tails.  Those that were correct continued to the next round - to guess again -…

The term “technical analysis” usually refers to the study of stock prices.  A technical analyst might use real-time or closing prices of stocks to predict future prices.  This is an interesting concept because of what is normally excluded from the analysis - namely, everything except prices.  Given that the approach doesn’t necessarily consider the health or profitability of the underlying companies, a purely technical approach seems to offer guidance that is disconnected from reality.  Yet…

What most people call “analysis,” I refer to this as “guidance.”  It is not guidance in terms of guiding the company; but rather, I provide a narrative to help guide people through the data - of which there is a great deal.  I play the role of a tour guide.  I remember when I was a teaching assistant for a social science class - and there was a contentious area that would likely be the focal point for essays - I said that it didn’t matter to me what “opinions” people expressed.  Nobody had…