MARCUS PADLEY THIS MONTH

Ask the average person how to invest in the stockmarket and you will get one of two answers: fundamental analysis or technical analysis, and never the two shall meet.

It all goes back to Benjamin Graham who wrote , the bible of fundamental analysis, in 1949. It contained the line, ‘We do not hesitate to declare that [technical analysis] is as fallacious as it is popular’. In that one sentence, on page two (!), he erected a wall between fundamental and technical analysis or, to put it another way, between investors and traders, and it has stood for 75 years with the proponents of both seemingly hell-bent on putting each other down. They both have their points.