What is technical analysis?

Technical analysis is a set of visual charting tools and statistical methods for price pattern and trend recognition used to predict stock and financial markets, find opportunities, and support trading decisions. When we say that technical analysis is a “set,” we imply that technical analysis as a discipline is not cohesive. It is not truly a theory. It is not a science. It is an eclectic collection of empirical methods, approaches, “theories”, and ways of forecasting prices using the price itself, or more precisely, its past history.