To determine what worldwide stock markets will do as far as fluctuations in price, involves first determining which school of thought will be utilized regarding the analysis of companies and the investment prospects they pursue. The most widely used school of thought which has proven reliable over multiple decades is the school of fundamental analysis.

Fundamental analysis views not only the financial opportunities of a company, but also the likelihood of accomplishing these goals in respect to their competitors. Technical analysis, on the other hand, has been successful in use, but not very structured or scientific. Thus, the question again arises, what is the connection between stocks and technical analysis?

Technical analysis is the study of past market trends to help forecast what future stock prices will be. However, this doesn't explain the entire connection between technical analysis and stocks. Needless to say, what makes people conclude that the price of a stock is determined by looking at just data and not take into consideration of the overall condition or financial state of a company?

Well, part of the reason that technical analysis is utilized by some market analysts is that, although one would think that statistically speaking a trading day on the stock market should only be influenced by that day's events and treated like an independent event, the reality is that most market movement trends over time and the full impact of one event (a downgrade of the stock by an analyst or a movement of earnings higher than expected by the same analysts) is never isolated to one day.

As a result, technical analysis utilizes tons of data including old stock quotes, trading volume charts, and a host of other data, to develop charts and graphs that work to determine exactly how long the impact of a move in a company will persist and impact the stock market trading of a particular issue.

In many cases, a side by side comparison of a fundamental analysis and a technical analysis of the same stock market issue have yielded results in which the technical analysis has been more able to predict the short term ebbs and flows of a particular company. However, the fundamental analysis works on a longer term basis, and so the technical analyst has earned a reputation of being a \"short\" predictor rather than a \"long\" predictor in the markets.

Overall, technical analysis is more detailed due to the large amount of terminology used which describes existing trend lines and graphical shapes. Typical investors without the knowledge needed can be easily discouraged when trying to comprehend this type of data. For example many terms used to describe trends are ambiguous and used interchangeably (e.g. elbow, shoulder). This can denote upswings or downswings with leveling off at intervals. This can make it harder for interpretation.

In conclusion, the question still remains, \"What's the connection between technical analysis and stocks?\", how is it determined and on what basis? How can these tools be used daily and made easier to comprehend. Although, technical analysis is not as accurate and can be very subjective, it has been successful so it makes it hard to dispute that it is still a viable tool used in market analysis.