+1 About 10 years ago I was following a debate in one of those archaic message lists, nowadays known as google groups, the importance of patterns in the markets. One of the participants was a very famous trader who has made the news many times. Heavy name indeed. He was insisting that patterns are random. There was also another person in the group who was working with him on developing trading systems. I happened to know the guy but the famous trader did not know that. Actually, I invited him to visit my country home and spend a weekend there. I learned from him that the only purpose he was so against patterns, I mean the famous trader, was for discouraging anyone else to look for them. He was doing that all day while posting in forums that patterns is non-sense.
You and other personalities like Taleb are ignorant of the concept of statistical significance. if you look at a random cloud once and you see a clown face then it is almost certain that you are fooled. If you look at another random cloud next day and you see again the same face, still there is certainty that you are fooled. But if you look again next day and you see the exact same face, things are starting to change. There is low probability that something is there. Then, if you look again a few days after that and you see the same exact face, the probability that there is an actual clown in the clouds starts becoming respectable. if this goes on for 50 more times, and each time you see the exact same face, at some point you must consider that there is high probability you are not fooled by randomness and there is some clown or at least something there other than randomness. If you still insist that you are fooled by randomness, you are the biggest clown.