The ability of simple rules to predict asset price movements, or technical analysis, has been a controversial
subject for many years. While the academic community has generally held technical analysts in disdain, its
recent fascination with predictability has reopened many of the old cases against technical analysis. Rather
than simply ignoring the rules used by technicians academics have been carefully scrutinizing them.1 The
evidence still seems somewhat inconclusive on the usefulness of these rules, but this is in contrast to the
earlier results that suggested that anyone following these was less than rationally motivated.