Paul Samuelson said, “even smart people have a hard time getting rich by predicting stock prices.”
Louis Bachelier said the “mathematical expectation of the speculator is zero, ” and that, if the market did not reflect the true current price, “it would quote not this price, but another price higher or lower.”
Dow Theory, and technical analysis in general, suggests that stock prices display observable trends.
Elaborate on each of these arguments.
Do you believe that stock prices follow observable trends or are random, or some other explanation?
Would you trade purely on technical, purely on fundamentals, a combination of both, or just buy and hold the index?
Would you follow an analyst without further due diligence? How would you choose?