As I learn about 'investing', I primarily consider myself an 'investor'. By that, I mean that my stock choices are geared towards holding times in excess of six months.

I do find in my travels a few stocks that are more geared to 'trading', where one can 'surf' the ups and downs and make a little money in the short term. One of these is China Wireless, a 'penny stock' that in the time that I've been watching it has swung from 12 cents down to 8 cents and back up to 17 cents. It's hard to wrap your head around trading tens of thousands of shares to make it seem like 'real money' (and you have to be careful that your 'trade commisions' are efficient at say $9.95 to trade 25,000 shares).

In Technical Analysis for Dummies , the author says:

Preventing and controlling lossis is more important to practically every technical trader you meet than outright profit-seeking. The technical analysis approach is demonstrably more risk-averse than the value-investing approach.

For the moment, I continue to be an 'investor', and I look to T/A for confirmation that my 'buys' and 'sells' make sense.