Let me explain. In a bear market, investors discount good news and react to the bad – in other words good news, bad action (or reaction). In bull markets the opposite occurs. At such times, stocks remain unrealistically priced for extended periods. As one market guru once quipped, the market can remain irrational much longer than someone on the wrong side of it can remain solvent. How efficient is that? 

If the efficient market hypothesis were true, great traders like T. Boone Pickens, Steve Cohen, Paul Tudor Jones and Dan Zanger (to name but a few) would not make as much money as they do. Those at the top of their game win consistently by looking at the market in a different way than the majority. The very best traders are masters of the technical and fundamental; they utilize statistics, quantitative analysis and rely on a variety of factors from macro-economic to micro-technical. In short, the fusion traders use whatever works and do not limit themselves to any single field of market study.

So why are there so few stock charting and analysis programs that do an effective job of handling fundamentals and technicals together? Most utilize one technique thereby requiring the trader/investor to master a number of programs. But is this absolutely necessary?