Technical analysis and foreign exchange markets

More about the book

" During the last decades, the international financial markets saw enormous developments. Today, every newspaper offers advice on investment strategies and analysts seemingly earn money by drawing magic lines through prices series. Even though more and more traders rely on technical analysis, economists remain sceptical. How can the apparent success of technical trading strategies be reconciled with efficient market theories? This book mainly consists of three parts. The first part critically reviews the empirical literature on technical analysis and suggests to leave behind profitability calculations in favor of a systematic approach to analyzing trading rules, where special attention is given to the evaluation of the rules' forecasts. The second part presents the results of an empirical analysis that covers 5 exchange rates series spanning more than 20 years. In the third part, the theoretical background as well as the implications of a widespread use of technical analysis are critically discussed. The thorough overview presented here lays a foundation for further discussions of technical analyses and its effects on markets. "