What Stock Market Information is actually useful?

There is an abundance of stock market information you can get on any company or mutual fund you want. You can find it on the web or you can request the information from your broker. But how much of this information is just useless?

It is true you can get stacks and stacks of information on any company you may choose. You can get income statements, balance sheets, analysis reports and so much more. There is an abundance of information out there that can be easily obtained by anyone looking for it.

Think about it, anyone can receive all this data. Any financial document you read about a company will have been read by millions of people before you. All relevant financials have already been analyzed and factored into a company. That combined with the fact that the markets are forward looking vehicles anyway. How valuable can it be in telling you which direction a stock is likely to go?

Even so the majority of people seem to believe this is the only way to make money in the market. It is not. It isn’t even the most effective way for many reasons, everyone has access to this information, a company’s financials can lie, a strong company does not necessarily mean a strong stock, and the more you research a stock the more you fall in love with the company, whether or not it is the best possible buy.

A stronger approach is by using chart patterns and price action to determine whether to buy or sell a stock. The benefit to using price patterns is that price patterns already have all of the fundamental data factored into them already. Not only do they have the fundamental data but the price it also factors in other data such as emotions, and future expectations. Another benefit is that price patterns occur over and over again and again so they can be easily tracked and tested.

Basically everyone should look at how useful there stock market information really is. Making things overly complicated by looking at pages of useless information will not help you make money in the market. Especially when the price of a company tells you everything you need to know about a company.