Technical Analyzers (AKA technicians, or chartists), are only interested in the price movements in the market.

Despite their unique methodology, Technicians really just care about supply and demand within a market to determine a direction, or future trend.

Instead of gaining an understanding the components of a market on an individual basis, technical analysis attempts to understand the market as a whole through its "manic depressive" like quality.

Technical analysis can be a very useful toolkit to your investment studies. It is a very broad topic, but it can help you become a better investor.

There are three textbook characteristics of Technicians approach to study:

1. The market discounts everything
2. Price moves in trends
3. History repeats itself

The market discounts everything means that the current price of a stock, tends to reflect everything that has or could affect a company. All factors, and emotions are already factored into a stock. So unlike Fundamentalists that study each factor on an individual basis, technical analysis offers the removal of the need to study each separately.

Price moving in trends is simple, and is the assumption that once a trend has been established, the probablity that a market will remain in that direction is higher than the probability against that established trend. Most of the technical indicators out there are based on this charateristic.

History repeats itself is understood as markets can be studied for up to 100 years back, because similar markets or charts, tend to have similar fluctuations, and patterns over time. This is why many technical analyzers use mechanical indicators, or moving averages. Good examples of history repeating itself are the study of seasonality within commodities, and the study of cyclical market cycles within a market.