Berkshire Hathaway Inc (BRK.B)

[bar1080]

Ever consider that technical analysis is based on flim flam, malarkey or even a scam, and one that CAN'T be stopped because it's so profitable for book publishers, brokers, brokerage houses and many others? Technical analysis encourages hyper-trading, as opposed to the buy/hold advice of Ben Graham & Buffett. Technical analysis promotes tax inefficient trading... bad for the investor, but good for public coffers. We KNOW the Graham/Buffett approach has made fortunes.

In 1960 the Attorney General of NY tried to stop the publication of a best selling book, "How I Made $2,000,000 in the Stock Market" by Nicholas Darvas, a professional dancer with conveniently murky European pre-war roots. The suit was the first to be taken under a NY law that banned misrepresentation in giving investment advice.

Likely Darvas's claim of investment success was baloney. He never produced brokerage proof of this success. But the courts ruled that a book can't be banned in the US. Darvas's book -- I read it as teenager long ago -- endorsed a variant of charting. We do know that some recent investing best-sellers have hinged on inflated success claims... for example, The Beardstown Ladies debacle of the late 1980s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolas_Darvas

I suspect that Darvas's books and the ensuing failure to stop them provided the template for decades of fictitious How-to investing guides, many based on technical analysis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beardstown_Ladies