(MONEY Magazine) – Why does Fidelity--the supposed bastion of fundamental stock research--maintain a state-of-the-art chart room staffed by 10 technical analysts? "One knock you always hear against Fidelity is that we have a lot of young fund managers, and the chart room is the place they can come to relive stock market history," replies Robert J. Haber, director of research operations.

That's a nice image--the chart room as a university library where eager students soak up the wisdom of previous generations. Only trouble is, it's more image than reality. Admits Jurrien H. Timmer, the senior technical analyst: "Ten years ago, just having all this data was a big deal, but now everyone can get it on a desktop computer."

When the chart room was first set up in the early 1960s, it really was a library of market data. Edward Johnson II, father of Fidelity's current chairman, Ned Johnson, was an inveterate newspaper clipper, and photos of his scrapbooks still adorn the chart room's walls. But the current operation is a long way from the elder Johnson's archive.

For starters, the name chart room is an understatement. The chart division occupies half the floor of a Boston high-rise. Analysts' offices run along the window side of the floor. The interior is open space with a latticed metal ceiling that allows curved, sliding walls to be moved to accommodate charts of varied lengths. The central graphic on the main wall is a 32-foot-long plot of the Dow from the early 1960s to the present. On the other side of the wall are charts for foreign markets. The most important chart, though, may well be the one at the entrance, which plots blue-chip stock prices from 1789 to the present by piecing together five different indexes. (Bearish investors might note that a trend line connecting the peaks would end with a Dow of less than 5000 today.)

Few portfolio managers have the time to browse among charts, no matter how fascinating. As a result, the chart room has to earn its keep today by generating action-oriented investing ideas: The chartists must market their ideas to the firm's portfolio managers. "If we spot an interesting trend," Timmer says, "we find the fund managers for whom it may be relevant."

One of the chart room's most important functions nowadays may be as a marketing tool. The crucial audience for Fidelity's research is composed of executives from the benefits departments of major U.S. corporations. Tax-deferred accounts constitute 56% of the $639 billion in mutual fund assets that Fidelity manages. The executives who visit fund companies to size them up as potential trustees for their savings plans aren't going to be satisfied with a meet and greet or a flip-chart presentation. They want a show--and Fidelity is ready to dazzle them. As you leave a tour of the chart room, you can't help thinking, "These guys are really smart." But then, that's why it's there.

--MICHAEL SIVY