It is my experience that an hour spent listening to their stories, or reading their insights, is often the equivalent to months of study in an academic environment.

Most of these individuals are successful because they recognize, in a way that academic analysis still does not, that asset price movements are not just random fluctuations driven by the rational behavior of independent traders. They recognize that human beings are, by nature, gregarious and communicative, and have an inner drive to belong to groups. Not surprisingly, therefore, group psychology provides a controlling influence over individual activity and transforms a large quantity of apparently unrelated decisions into a more certain outcome.

Importantly, this outcome reveals itself in the form of rhythmic, patterned, price movements that bear not only a natural relationship to one another but also are essentially predictable once they are understood. This is why the discipline of technical analysis—hearing the message of the market via price movements—is such an accurate tool for making profitable trading decisions.