You are right on the money QuantWizard, charting is an art more than a technique, but you can still make a comfortable living just trading classical chart patterns, assuming you can find the low-risk/high-reward ones...
As Warren Buffett once famously said: I knew that charting didn't worked once I turned the chart upside down and got the same result. Whether he's right or not, I leave that unsaid...
Warren Buffet is wizard of investing and not trading , if he goes to intraday trading with under capitalized account, i really doubt he will do better than average . regarding charting it's just a path to a destination, some people go through airlines ,some use ship lines and some use their cars and high ways, each one has it's own risks and advantages.as you said it's completely subjective. what did not worked for WB, may work for at least some prop traders or retail traders who consistently make money.WB is 83 years old and he started investing at 15 age.so don't forget "opportunity factor" and compound interest he had in near 70 years of investing in stocks .
Just my 2 cents. Trading is more or less an educated guess. However, the stock charts will give you a clue of where a stock is headed be it, up, down or sideways. On the plus side, you do not have to get 50% winners. What matters is the size of your winners compared to the size of your losers. If you can manage your losses and keep them small, half the battle is won! The other half is letting your winners run! I learned that the hard way! Risk Management is number one and now, I try to focus on that before I place a trade.
What is a trend? What is defined as momentum? Everyone has his/her own definition. It is useless without a mathematically precise definition. So a momentum up trend could be all these conditions are true. 20/50/200 days moving average slope is positive, and all 20/50/200 days volume moving average slope is positive. or you may have your own. effective or not. do it in real trading to prove. 99.999% failure rate in real world.
i agree with you, but the other half which is finding an edge that has a positive expectancy and proper rew/risk is important too.some people including Dr Van Tharp under estimate this important half.
that's rigth , every one has his/ her own definition,but trend definition is clear as crystal in classic T.A .when i said momentum ,i did not mean Momentum indicator, but rather i meant a series of indicators that define if the market is trending and if they are trending how much potency has been left.i combine that with various filters .you mentioned a good question...it really took me a lot of time understand what's the trend and what causes that.as you said ,i prefer to publish my actual trades here and don't argue about T.A definitions because every one has his own definition.
This is a short sell in German DAX index and this positon is still in progress .even if it returns upward, i will close it by profit,because i will start trailing stop on that & i wait to see.
today's short sell result on GC ( gold) & YM ( emini dow jones) .in both cases my trade was successful . i'm still waiting for the result of DAX index short sell (my previous post) which is in profit and is still open and in progress.this recent month was great for me..(also you can check the time of my recent posts with the closing position time marked up in the trading platform . Gold : Dow Jones :