Both FA and "TA without backtest or subjective TA" are useless. For FA, if you are not insiders, you never know the real data, no matter government data or corp data because gov and corp almost always release not real data to make public believes what they want the direction to be. There are too many grey area for big corp to do so, while government is the higher level of the country and they can do whatever they want. You may think only country like China releases fake government data, but do you think usa government would really give you real data? For TA, subjective kind of Elliott wave is nothing more than a marketing tool in history then nowadays is more like a religion, it only works if you believe your subjective mind has some supernatural ability. Elliott wave works for someone just believes if he reads a book saying Elliott wave works like bible, but it is not helping people to make money, it just makes people believe themselves they have learn something that they can use their eyeball to decide what will happen in the market. For other TA that can be backtested, backtest result can tell if there is predictive power or not.
Actually I plan to stop. I hadn't intended to offer an education in fundamental analysis. That can be found by googling. My intent, as I said earlier, was to clarify the purposes behind the two types of analysis. If I failed to do so, then I'll just have to move on since no one will read this after tomorrow anyway, and few will care regardless. If a few people were enlightened in any way, that's enough.
As I said earlier, FA is useless except you are insider of gov/big corp since you never get the real correct data to do analysis if you are an outsider like normal people. Example, US government really releases the correct employee data? Ho yeah~
So to cut to the chase why doesn't someone start a live trading journal and invite the " big dicks " to show off how good they really are in real time ?? Not just reminiscences of past glories or idle boasting.
Go to EDGAR pay your $89/ company and you will get what all the hedge funds, banks, private equity and the SEC gets or take your chances with free stuff... Obviously if you are using FA, you are not day or short term swing trader...
FA is certainly not useless, but it is like chart reading, watching the volume on the Dome or using other TA, the more experience you have the better you understand the areas one studies. Back in the 70's, before advent of home PC, you had to study the financials, even doing what is now simple TA was tough back then. So many are bitching over low interest rates, if you were able to read the financials and stuck your dough in solid stocks that pay dividends, you could be making over 5%. Just like New highs/lows, many don't use this information in their longer term trading. And although I only see value in New lows, others more bright than me can read value in both. Now granted many will say it only shows after the fact, but if you use the information a month after you believe a major low is in overall Market, lines up real well in Buying Low.
I am talking reliable numbers for you to do analysis with, if you want inside information call your good friend Rajat Gupta perhaps next time he is in a board meeting he can call you instead of Raj.