Chartist trading advice derives value from occult-style insider knowledge, not profit

Evidence

As Crosthwaite et al. (2019) put it, “the ‘real value’ of chartist investment advice—and especially that of its two most renowned exponents—lies precisely in its close kinship with astrology and other branches of occult lore, if we understand that value as inhering not ultimately in a capacity to make profits trading stocks, but in entry into an intricate and enveloping system of privileged knowledge that provides an alluring alternative vision of the forces shaping the stock market and the world at large” (678). … Economic forecasting as a practice of enlisting science to temper the future’s uncertainty began in earnest during fin de siècle America and intensified in the wake of World War I, when statistical tools were used systematically to solve this ancient problem. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 459

Categorization

• QUESTION: Kinship between technical charting and occult systems — is this speculative culture’s oldest template for ‘homo speculans’?