The overall causes of practitioner ire were, above all, the random-walk hypothesis and the efficient-market hypothesis. They were a direct challenge to the two dominant schools of thought among investment professionals: "chartism" (or "technical analysis") and "fundamentals analysis." Chartism was in a sense a by-product of the rapid development in the late nineteenth century of the technology for recording and disseminating securities prices, notably the stock "ticker," in which prices were recorded on exchanges' floors, transmitted telegraphically, and printed out on paper tape in brokers' offices. With prices available in close to real time, it became possible to construct charts of hour-by-hour fluctuations.

Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, loc. 334