Fundamental analysis looks at the fortunes of a company that issues common stock that individuals and financial institutions may purchase. Fundamental analysis concerns itself with a company’s balance sheet, competition from other companies in the same business, product launches, costs of inputs to production such as raw materials and labor, the effect of macroeconomic trends on the company in question, and really anything that concerns the current and future health of a given company.

Notice that I did not mention the price of a company’s stock, whether it is high or low, trending up or trending down, etc.

Technical analysis looks at nothing except the price of a company’s stock and hundreds of different indicators that have to do with people buying and selling shares of the stock. It is concerned with quantifying all aspects of market activity surrounding the stock, as opposed to the fortunes of the company that issues the stock. Technical analysis in its most basic form has to do with charts of price movements of individual stocks as well as groups of stocks and stock indexes. In addition to raw movements, ‘technical indicators’, often obscure and arcane, have been invented. Technicians use them to attempt to further analyse aspects of market moves, all in the hope of forecasting future price movements with some amount of consistency, through a combination of these indicators.

So if you want to make money in the market, whether through buying stock, buying stock options, ETFs or mutual funds, is technical or fundamental analysis more reliable? Many experts think that one should be aware of both the fundamentals and the technical side of a company and its stock chart.

At the same time, it is true that many experts in fundamental analysis concern themselves only with how well a company is doing when determining whether or not to buy stock or a stock option contract in it, and think that charts are useless tools for the task. Also, many pure technicians have no interest at all in the business of the company whose chart they are analyzing; they think that signals from the charts are sufficient to determine whether the stock should be bought or not.

The argument as to the relative merits of technical analysis versus fundamental analysis will probably never be conclusively resolved. But at least now you’ll hopefully have a handle on the difference between the two.

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For every stock that you own, you must spend at least one hour per week for each stock. Even though the balance sheet and the company’s growth was on the right path when you first bought into the company, that doesn’t mean it will continue on the same path. The company may decide to go into a different area to try and grow the business, It may work in the distant future, but that doesn’t mean that it will help in the near future as it ay reduce their revenue for the short term. Many other things can also and will affect the stock including the company’s competitors or even the overall markets.

Is the company is a sector that is in favor with investors? Is there another sector that will affect the one that you’re in? If oil goes up in price it will affect sectors like the airline industry in a negative way, but at the same time it could give the alternative energy sector a boost. Like I said, once you understand how sectors affect another you’ll be able to capitalize on the situation.

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Chasing a stock is a common mistake you need to be aware of, or your portfolio will take a beaten. This is when a stock had some good news come out and you missed the information when it was first released. In other words, the stock price made some good gains and you didn’t take advantage of the situation. I’ve seen stocks jump in value by over 30% and watch other traders try to guess at if the price would come back down temporarily so they could jump in. As the price goes up, they try to stay near the low end of the trading range, hoping for the pull-back. When the pull-back does come, it comes in the from of profit-taking from other trader and investors that got in on the initial news.

This can also take place over a period of a couple of days where the stock price jumps as much as 100% or better, only to have it come back down to levels of the original price before the move up.

Just because the stock price has moved up in a relative short period, doesn’t mean you should jump in for a quick gain. The traders that do that are very experienced in investing and this practice should be left for them to do. Any stock that you are planning to get into should be one that you’ve researched. You should be very familiar with it’s balance sheets, as well as other financial information in regards to the company. If not, take some time to check out a stock market site for information. You can never do enough research.

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One strategy that I use and I do use it quite a bit is referred to as channel trading. It’s help me many times in the past as well as made me plenty of money. It takes a while to really be able to do it, but it’s relatively easy. What is channel trading? It’s a technique that deals with a particular stock that a trader has been watching, where the price of the stock stays within a average range.

Stock prices do trade within a range that is typical to the value of the company. Let’s say that stock “XYZ” has been trading within the price range of $20 per share to $28 per share. When the price is down around the twenty dollar area you start building a position as the price of the stock gets over the twenty-seven dollar range you start getting ready to dump the shares.

Take into consideration that this is not a perfect system. There might be times that the stock will drop below the low range as well as the company having strong fundamental and a good balance sheet will push the price into a new range and you will have to start studying to figure out the new range. Sometimes profit-takers will sell off their position a little early because of fear within the markets.

If you look around you can find some good stocks that trade over a $20-$30 range. Of course most of those have a higher price tag (over $120 per share). Take your time and you will find many that will work great for you, but remember this is not an exact science. Before investing in any company, you must do your due diligence. As I always say, research is the key to successful stock trading. If you take your time and check out a good stock market site, you’ll save yourself headaches later on.

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