On the ChartSmith Trader's Blog we have included fundamental news and information on various commodities, however, when it comes to actual trading decisions our decisions are primarily based on technical chart data.

Here's some thoughts on technical vs fundamental...

Charts give us the up-to-the-day information needed for making actual trading decisions. Each day's trading range has incapsulated the opinion and emotion of the world's trading clientel--taking into consideration supply & demand issues and concerns, the vote has been cast and the open-high-low-and close tell the story without human emotion. The prices represented on the chart are what they are, plain and simple, and based on specific factors as described in ChartSmith-Forging Your Financial Future, we can create trading plans that place the odds of success greatly in our favor while simultaneously reducing risk. That's the way we like it.

As for fundamental information, many of you have heard me call it "funny-mentals". The credit for that term goes to Mr. Ed Seykota of South Lake Tahoe. Funnymentals is a great description because this type of market information includes mostly ambitious opinions and emotionally driven sensationalized thoughts and ideas with sprinkles of factual data. Obviously this makes for a tough combination when trying to make sound trading decisions, not to mention attempting to stay committed to one's decisions. Like the legendary trader, Ted Warren, said in his book, How to Make the Stock Market Make Money for You, "...the trader (speculator) begins to run at the sight of his own shadow..."

Funnymentals are a part of the investing marketplace that Shawna and I find interesting and fun. This is why we love to include tidbits of recent news items along the way, keeping in mind that the fundamentals are more for entertainment than anything else.

Technical vs fundamental; now you know that we likem' both, but for two distinctly different reasons.

To your trading success, Scott