The typical “investors” will adopt a buy and hold strategy.

Such a strategy develops because from literature and common speak, “investors” are seen as having little involvement in the market after having done their “research”.

On top of that, from some other sources, Technical Analysis is often frowned upon because it is often associated with intraday traders, quick and dirty money, complex, unreliable and bankruptcy in the end.

These 2 main misconceptions and misinformation has led many people to adopt extreme ends of fundamental analysis and technical analysis.

it is the former. “Investors” adopting the buy and hold strategy are usually “losers” with no sell strategy. The main purpose of being in the market is to make money. Without a sell strategy, the “loser” usually sells when their investments shows a fundamental change, which usually is known after their investment has shown a loss.

Fundamental analysis is ideal for stock picking, but take those research material with a pinch of salt. Technical analysis is still needed to verify that the stock is moving.

Likewise, technical analysis is also needed to inform the investor that the stock has stopped moving for the long term. It is only this way that the long term investor is able to cash out before the investment becomes a liability.

Technical Analysis need not be complex. The complexity is often increased with increased usage of indicators and constant switching between them. Technical analysis can be simple if one limits to not more than 5. Personally I will recommend at most 3 that you are most comfortable with and master them. Simple charting like trendline drawing, identification of support and resistance level is more than enough for the average investors.

Technical Analysis need not be for the short haul and can be used for medium to long term.

Whether it is short term depends on whether the stock is a good trending stock. If a stock oscillates, using Technical Analysis will certainly give alot of buy and sell signals.

A good trending stock will usually dip very little in a market correction. Therefore investors should do a final round of filtering based on their trend. Once the trend ends, investors should just cash out.