In most aspects of life, it's safe to say that timing is everything. Whether it's arriving to pick up your prom date ten minutes early instead of ten minutes late, or waiting to buy a new refrigerator until the retailer announces their final sale prices, getting the timing right for major decisions can have significant financial and emotional impacts. Investors use a practice called stock market forecasting to help them make predictions about whether a certain stock is likely to increase or decrease in price, and base their decisions about whether to buy or sell on the signals that the market sends them during analysis.

If you're a relatively new investor, it's likely that stock market forecasting sounds like a smart and useful concept, but do you know how to go about making these predictions, or who to turn to for reliable forecasts if you can't come up with them yourself? The signals that you should be looking for are already lurking in the stock market itself, but in order to spot them you must be able to read and interpret the stock charts, analyzing the data of the past for clues about the future.

One of the most important tools for those that would like to engage in stock market forecasting is technical analysis. Developed as the practice of evaluating stock market price fluctuations in an attempt to make predictions about how a stock will behave in the future, technical analysis is the best tool for being able to forecast the future of a stock that analysts have at their disposal. The only problem is that it takes a lot of time to gather and scrutinize the stock charts, looking for trends and patterns that could provide clues about whether the price is likely to move up or down.

If you're not yet willing to devote this much time to your own stock market forecasting, you can instead capitalize on the experience and expertise of others by joining online communities of investing experts that provide daily breakdowns of market movement. This is a great idea for new investors because it provides the opportunity for visual learning in a way that studying newspaper stock reports and reading commentary never could. These communities also allow you to ask questions if there's a movement or bit of analysis you don't understand right away. After all, why spend time learning from your own mistakes when you can learn from someone else's?