Trading Technician

There are a particular type of trader in the financial world that believes in technology.  No, I'm not talking about tech stocks.  I'm talking about the trader that needs to have the fastest computer on the block, a Cray computer clone.  A 6 monitor setup with all kinds of charts, level II quotes and DOMs for various indices, currencies, etc.  This tech savvy trader is usually a chartist, who always follows his indicators and never bothers to understand the market.  It is all about making everything as dry and technical as possible.  He probably fiddles with developing systems and backtesting.  This type loves to look at hundreds of charts per day, and loves to draw trendlines and trend channels when studying charts.  They usually have a disdain for fundamentals or studying market psychology.  They are all about charts and figures and numbers and lines.  They look down on dicretionary traders that trade mainly on fundamentals.   They do tend to be more disciplined than discretionary traders, however.

I call this type of trader a trading technician.  They are quite inflexible and stubborn, which describes how most traders think.  I am also stubborn, as long as the method works.  A lot of trading technicians make money, otherwise they wouldn't be able to afford the equipment and financial/data subscriptions.  But they probably could make the same with half the equipment and charts.  And they could probably make more money if they were more flexible and looked at fundamentals.

I've never been a technician.  I used to trade with a 17" CRT monitor and thought it was good enough, because it was an upgrade from a 15" CRT!  Then I upgraded to a 19" LCD, and then to a wide screen 22" LCD, and thought I was high tech.  Well, now I use 2 wide screen LCD monitors and it seems like plenty to me. 

I can't look at a chart and say whether the index/commodity/currency would go up or down.  But if you tell me the news behind the chart, things become a bit more predictable.  If you also tell me what investors are thinking, what they are expecting, both short term and long term, then the picture becomes even clearer.