Technical analysis is often criticized for lacking scientific rigour or worse, for lacking any basis whatsoever. For example, this ditty is typical:
"Technical analysis involves studying graphs of stock movement over time as a way to predict future moves. It's a widely used method on Wall Street, and it has exactly the same scientific validity as pretending you are a witch and forecasting market moves from chicken droppings."
Wall Street Journal, Betting on the Bad Guys by Scott Adam, 6/5/10
Yet considerable research exists which supports
and explains virtually all core technical principles, such as the existence of trending
and mean reversion behavior, momentum and sentiment effects, and support and
resistance. Only a small sample of the publicly available academic research is presented here,
as a tribute to the doubters. Links designated PDF are internal links to Adobe PDF documents.
Academic research and misc presentations
A Century of Evidence on Trend-Following Investing - Hurst, Ooi, Pedersen
PDF
A computational exploration of the efficacy of Fibonacci Sequences in Technical analysis and trading - Bhattacharya & Kumar
PDF
A Unified Theory of Underreaction, Momentum Trading and Overreaction in Asset Markets - Hong & Stein
PDF
An Evolutionary
Approach to Technical Trading and Capital Market Efficiency - The Wharton School
PDF
An Evolutionary Adaptive Learning Model with Fundamentalists and Moving Average Traders - Gerwin A. W. Griffioen PDF
Analogy Between Scientific Study of Technical Analysis and Ethnopharmacology, Waldemar Stronka PDF
Behavior and Performance of Investment Newsletter Analysts - Yale School of
Mgt. PDF
Bollinger Bands Thirty Years Later - Mark Leeds
PDF
Can Exchange Rates Forecast Commodity Prices? - Chen, Rogoff, Rossi PDF
Can Individual Investors Beat the Market? - Coval, Hirshleifer & Shumway PDF
Chartist Prediction in the Foreign Exchange Market - Ahrens & Reitz
PDF
Charting
and Technical Analysis - Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern PDF
Currency Traders and Exchange Rate Dynamics - Cheung & Chinn PDF
Cultural
and stock price clustering: Evidence from the People's Republic of China - Brown & Mitchell PDF
Currency
Orders and Exchange Rate Dynamics: An Explanation for the Predictive Success
of Technical Analysis - C. L. Osler, Federal Reserve Bank of New York PDF
Does trend following work on stocks? - Cole Wilcox and Eric Crittenden PDF
Deviations from Put-Call Parity and Stock Returns PDF
Fact, Fiction and Momentum Investing - Asness, Frazzini, Israel, Moskowitz PDF
Foundations
of Technical Analysis - Lo, Mamaysky & Wang PDF
Economic Fundamentals,
Risk, and Momentum Profits - Liu, Warner & Zhang PDF
Equity Returns at the Turn of the Month - Xu and McConnell PDF
Evidence for Feignebaum Universality in Stock Indices Behavior - A.V. Batunin PDF
Exchange rate changes and net positions of speculators
in the futures market - Klitgaard and Weir PDF
Expected
returns and liquidity premiums on the Paris Bourse: an empirical investigation
- Hamon & Jacquillat PDF
Head & Shoulders: not just a flaky pattern - Osler & Chang, Federal Reserve
Bank of New York PDF
Herd Behavior in Financial Markets - Bikhchandani & Sharma PDF
Herding and delegated portfolio
management - Maug & Naik PDF
How
rewarding is technical analysis? Evidence from Singapore stock market - Wong,
Manzur & Chew PDF
How Charts Influence Decisions to Buy and Sell Stocks PDF
High
Frequency Exchange Rate Forecasting - Fiess & MacDonald PDF
Ignore Momentum at Your Own Peril - Dimson, Marsh, Staunton - PDF
Index funds and stock market
growth - William Goetzmann PDF
Investor sentiment
and the cross-section of stock returns - Baker & Wurgler
PDF
Institutional
Trading and Stock Returns - Cai & Zheng PDF
Is
technical analysis in the foreign exchange market profitable? - St. Louis Federal
Reserve Bank PDF
Implied
Volatility Indices as Leading Indicators of Stock Index Returns? - Pierre Giot
PDF
Generating Excess Returns through Global Industry Rotation - Loudon & Okunev PDF
Giving Content to Investor Sentiment: The Role of Media in the StockMarket - Paul C. Tetlock PDF
Long Lasting Momentum in Weekly Returns - Gutierrez & Kelley PDF
Macroeconomic
Implications of the Beliefs & Behavior of Foreign Exchange Traders - UC
Santa Cruz PDF
Market
Law Found? Supply and Demand Follow Same Pattern for all Firms PDF
Market Timing: A Test of a Charting Heuristic - Leigh, Paz & Purvis
PDF
Market
Timing - Aswath Damodaran, NYU Stern PDF
Momentum and Autocorrelation in Stock Returns - Lewellen PDF
Momentum Strategies - Chan, Jegadeesh, Lakonishok PDF
New
Trading Rules in Financial Markets and Wiener-Kolmogorov Prediction Theory:
A Study of Technical Analysis - Neftci PDF
Nonlinearities
and Cyclical Behavior: The Role of Chartists and Fundamentalists - Westerhoff & Reitz PDF
Number Preference
In Australian Stock Prices - Chris Doucouliagos PDF
Point and Figure charting: A computational methodology and trading rule performance in the
S&P 500 futures market - Anderson & Faff PDF
Price clustering and
natural resistance points in the Dutch stock market: a natural experiment -
Joep Sonnemans PDF
Price Exhaustion
and Number Preference: time and price confluence in Australian stock prices
- Hristos Doucouliagos PDF
Price Momentum and Trading Volume - Lee & Swaminathan PDF
Profitability
of Momentum Strategies in the International Equity Markets - Chan, Hameed & Tong PDF
Psychological
Barriers in Gold Prices? - Brian Lucey PDF
Random
Walk Hypotheses and Profitability of Momentum Based Trading Rules - Venkataramani
PDF
Reference
list of misc. TA related academic research papers PDF
Returns
to Buying Winnners and Selling Losers: Implications for Stock Market Effeciency
- Jegadeesh PDF
Return reversal in UK shares - Glen C. Arnold & Rose D. Baker PDF
Re-Examining
the Profitability of Technical Analysis with White’s Reality Check - Hsu
& Kuan PDF
Round Numbers and Security Returns - Edward Johnson PDF
Smoke and Mirrors? Charting and Technical Analysis - Aswath Damodaran PDF
Support
for Resistance: Technical Analysis and Intraday Exchange Rates - Carol Osler
PDF
Stock
Market Trading Rule Discovery Using Technical Charting Heuristics PDF
Stop
Loss Orders and Price Cascades in Currency Markets - Osler PDF
Systematic
Noise - Barber, Odean & Zhu PDF
Technical
Analysis in Foreign Exchange – The Workhorse Gains Further Ground - Gehrig
& Menkhoff
PDF
Technical Analysis in the Foreign Exchange Market: A Cointegration-Based Approach - Fiess & MacDonald PDF
The
empirical relationship between stock returns, return volatility and trading
volume - Roland Mestel PDF
The Predictive Power of Head-and-Shoulders Price Patterns in the U.S. Stock
Market - U. of Iowa PDF
The Predictive Success and Profitability of Chart Patterns in the EuroDollar Foreign Exchange Market - Walid Ben Omrane, Finance Unit, Catholic University of Louvain PDF
The Profitability of
Technical Analysis: A Review - Park and Irwin PDF
The
Extent and Significance of Technical Analysis in the Foreign Exchange Markets
- Aaron Schiff PDF
The Influence
of Positive Feedback Trading on Return Autocorrelation - Bohl & Reitz
PDF
The
Reversal of Large Stock Price Declines: The Case of Large Firms - Benou & Richie PDF
Temporary
Movements in Stock Prices - Jonathan Lewellen PDF
Technical Analysis in Financial Markets, Gerwin A. W. Griffioen, University of Amsterdam PDF
Technical Analysis
in the Foreign Exchange Market: A Layman’s Guide - Christopher J. Neely
PDF
Technical Analysis
and Liquidity Provisions - Kavajecz and White PDF
Technical Analysis with a Long Term Perspective: Trading Strategies and Market Timing Ability - Dušan Isakov & Didier Marti PDF
Technical Analysis, Momentum and Autocorrelation - Honga and Satchellb PDF
The
Hidden Language of the Charts - NY Times PDF
This
Alchemy May Yield Real Gold - Business Week PDF
Trading
Rules and Trading Volume - Stefan Nagel PDF
Trading Styles and Trading Volume - Stefan Nagel PDF
Two centuries of trend following - Capital Fund Management, Paris
PDF
Use of Momentum in trading across industry sectors - Yuri Krapivin PDF
When Do Stop-Loss Rules Stop Losses? - Kaminski & Lo PDF
Market Microstructure Papers
Market Microstructure:A Practitioner’s Guide - Ananth Madhavan PDF
Price Discovery: The Impact of Orderflow and Liquidity on the Yield Curve - Brandt and Kavajecz PDF
The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates - Richard K. Lyons PDF
Are Supply and Demand Driving Stock Prices? - Carl Hopman PDF
Stock Returns and Trading at the Close - Cushing and Madhavan PDF
Price Impact Asymmetry of Block Trades: An Institutional Trading Explanation - Gideon Saar PDF
The Informational Role of Stock and Option Volume - Chan, Chung, Fong PDF