Technical analysis introduction. First of all, what is technical analysis? Well, it's a type of investment analysis that uses solely price and volume data, which is often depicted in a graph or a chart in its decision making process. Now, technical analysis can be used for any security in a freely traded liquid market across the globe. In fact, in theory, technical analysis of any financial instrument does not necessarily require a detailed knowledge of that company or security. As long as you have a chart that represents the action in this freely traded market, a technical analyst or a technician, as we call them does not even need to know the name or type of security to conduct the analysis in theory. Now, what are some of the key principles behind technical analysis? First, they believe that the supply and demand of the security determines prices and any changes in that supply and demand can also dictate changes in trends of the price. And lastly, prices can be predicted solely with price and volume charts or other similar tools. Now, one last point is that because fundamental analysis, which is more traditional is more time consuming than your typical technical analysis, and investors with shorter timeframes like traders or day traders tend to prefer technical analysis. Having said that, technical analysis can be applied over any timeframe from short-term price movements to long-term movements of annual closing prices. Some other key principles of technical analysis. First, technicians focus on human psychology and they believe that human behavior tends to repeat itself and as a result can be predictable. And since humans are trading securities market trends and patterns also repeat themselves and also are predictable to some extent. Next, technicians rely on knowledgeable market participants putting all that knowledge to work in the market and therefore influencing prices and volume. Then we have the market bringing together the collective wisdom of all these participants weighted according to the size of various trades they make and allows analysts to understand the collective sentiment of the marketplace as a whole.