Harry Williams is a professional individual stock investor in US market. He thinks that the difference between institutional investors and individual investors are that the former is more capable of processing fundamental news in a timely manner, whereas the latter react too slowly, are less disciplined, and are subject to cognitive bias. He also thinks that the timing of news release could be manipulated to mislead outsiders (i.e., the investors with no inside information), and therefore, it is not a good idea to trade stocks based on fundamental analysis. He believes that market price includes all information, and therefore, technical analysis is much more reliable than fundamental analysis. He has been doing algorithmic trading, which is solely based on stock market data (e.g., stock price, trading volume, price volatility, liquidity proxies), and got an 8-year annualized return of around 20%.

 

Murphy Williams is a professional individual investor in US stock market. He has achieved a 28-year annualized return of around 20%. He has long-term (i.e., from one-year to three-year horizon) and short-term (i.e., daily to monthly horizon) investments. He reads financial reports, fundamental news, analyst forecasts, and historical market data. He believes that accounting data could be manipulated, the release of news could be timed, analyst forecasts could be biased, market data could be manipulated by institutional investors. Therefore, he does not rely on one single approach. His trading strategy is based on both fundamental and technical analysis.

 

Please define technical and fundamental analysis, explain the pros and cons of the two methods, express your view on which method is better for investors, and demonstrate the reasons that support your argument.