Technical analysis could foresee property falls, by Tom Stevenson

“Charts are a visual representation of mass psychology at work but they are very difficult to interpret, something that was brought home to me by one of the most readable books I’ve yet seen on technical analysis: Marber on Markets, published by Harriman House. Brian Marber is the doyen of technical analysts, having been poring over charts ever since Kennedy was shot and I was born – a long time. Having started out drawing charts with a sharp pencil and a ruler in the pre-computer age, he also understands more about all those moving averages, stochastics, indicators and candlesticks than probably anyone else alive. Having devoted himself to the market’s trends and patterns, its double tops and triangles and Bollinger bands for more than 40 years, he also passes my major test of whether someone has anything interesting to say about the market – he was working between 1972 and 1974, the most traumatic period in living memory for investors. As he concludes in one of the many pithy one-liners gracing this elegantly written book: “It is neither necessary nor possible to understand the market; the one essential is to come to terms with it.””