It seems that retail traders are heavily in favour of technical trading strategies...
Its a marketing tool by software companies (e.g. chart programs, broker trade platforms). Simply, much easier to attract new clients via promoting technical studies, backtesting tools than any other trading tool.
Yet, in the past year, I've seen more software companies spend more money advertising trading tools involving news, fundamentals, economic, money management resources as
extras with the purchase of the software or new accounts at a broker. Yet, technical studies still remains as their primary marketing tool to attract traders.
In addition, most trading forums in many ways do the same inadvertently. Seriously, the most popular threads involve technical studies and are often the most moderated threads. In contrast, other threads tend to be LESS moderated due to less interest. In addition, trading forums sponsors (their advertisements at the forum) promote technical studies heavily.
My point is that retail traders are constantly bombarded with resources about technical studies and that explains why retail traders tend to navigate towards technical studies as their primary trading tool and along with the fact its instilled in us that we need "access" to charts to be able to trade or see the progress of our trades even if we don't use technical studies.
For example, when I logged into Elitetrader.com today, I see a BIG RED add on the left by Ninjatrader Brokerage. It has a laptop with charts and technical studies on the charts. Than the add talks about super tight spreads and commissions. I bet that AD would be less interesting to newbie traders if it didn't contain an image of the laptop with charts and it only talked about tight spreads and commissions.
Regardless, as mentioned above, we're seeing more advertisements about OTHER trading tools that have nothing to do with technical studies...that's a good thing because I'm a strong believer that successful trading involves more than just entry/exit signals.
I personally would like to see
more advertisements by psychologists, risk managers, computer companies, tax accountants, universities that have trading classes/arcades, trading careers, internships and many other resources for traders.