Technical analysis is the examination of past price movements to forecast future price movements. Technical analysts are sometimes referred to as chartists because they rely almost exclusively on charts for their analysis.
Technical analysis is applicable to stocks, indices, commodities, futures, currencies or any tradable instrument where the price is influenced by the forces of supply and demand. Price refers to any combination of the open, high, low or close for a given security over a specific timeframe. The time frame can be based on intraday, daily, weekly or monthly price data and last a few hours or many years. In addition, some technical analysts include volume or open interest figures with their study of price action.
AmiBroker provides a comprehensive set of technical analysis tools that will be presented in this chapter.