"The market in general seems all about faith. Nope, not religious faith, but just faith."
um, no. the market is about supply and demand. TA is a tool to help model that. FA, otoh, can also offer insight into value ( moreso than price) and depending on yer timeframe and goal, choose your methodology and take yer position.
in the long run, the market is a phenomenally effective, efficient price discovery mechanism.
AAPL is worth far more now, than 4 yrs ago, because the VALUE of AAPL (the company) is far greater now than it was then
that's not manipulation, it's not faith, and it's not big money controlling the stock.
if you were smart enuf to realize the genius of steve jobs (which would be an aspect of fundamental analysis) you would have done excellently.
that's just one example. but there has NEVER been a more democratic, fair, and NON-manipulative way to allocate capital than the two way auction process market.
usually, the people who whinge about "manipulation", or how the "big money" "controls" everything, etc. are people who don't want to take responsibility for their own trading or investments.
we have access to phenomenally fast data feeds, tons of realtime data, etc. and there are tons of opp's that present themselves every single day.
big money has, in some ways, some 'power' but so does "little money'. we have the power to be MUCH more nimble than big money, for instance.
"There is a whole lot of cash out there and there are only a few men controlling it. When they believe an equity is a buy, they buy it sending the price up. When they believe its a sell, they sell it and the price goes down.
The key word is *believe*. It has nothing to do with fundamentals or demand. They only have to believe but not what is real."
rubbish. do your own analysis, whether it is peter lynchian, buffet;'ian or whatever and do what YOU think is right . there is a reason why WMT increased several thousand percent. it wasn't what "big money believed". there is a reason why some stocks turn into a 2, 3, 4, 10 bagger and it's not big money "manipulating" anything.
the markets are democratic. the order book doesn't care who you are, or how big your account is.
So with that said, the best thing us commoners can do is follow the herd of money managers from one target of belief to the next. We ourselves cannot make markets. We can only follow these guys that do