To the best of my knowledge, Thomas N. Bulkowski is the trader who made the most extensive studies on chart patterns. Here is the overall performance of ascending triangles, for instance: http://thepatternsite.com/at.html There are tons of other classic chart patterns in his book Encyclopedia of Chart Patterns, a must-read for any serious chart pattern trader.
Thanks all! I'll probably find nothing more than anecdotes, which is useful still! Probably then a more scientific & objective method, based on facts, would be to analyze the stock market data, and find which signals maybe influenced the moves. I Imagine there's tons of quant / automated trading systems based on that. I'm not so familiar with these, but I guess a mix of both anecdotal data (thanks @Tradex and @nyxtrader), as inputs for such analysis would be a good staring point. Stuff to work on...
The secret is that there is no secret. If you could manage to find ten legit traders that made legit profits, I would lay big odds that every one of them was going about it a different way. There is no singular TA study that lays the proverbial golden egg. TBH, the rules set that you use for taking a trade entry is more important than the indicator you are using.
Another trader I know recommended that exact book. I'll make sure to read it then, thanks for the suggestion!
And great site! Or rather, great data, lol! If you can get past the "I made my site with MS Word 3.1" look haha. My eyes bleed already after a quick look ;-P
Thanks for the replies! I understand that tools, indicators and techniques make only part of the equation. Of course it also depends on what time frame, what market and what instruments, i.e. the context overall. I have enough experience to know to expect this, plus there's always a learning curve and nothing replaces personal experience, getting to master your arsenal, your technical proficiency. That being said, then let me precise my context: I'm mostly a swing trader (mid-term, from days to months) and a long-term investor (2+ years), on US traded markets. I use a mix of options for trading, on ETFs mostly, and options (leaps on ETFs) + stocks (mostly dividend payers) for long term. I stick to hourly, daily and weekly time-frames for charts. So, I'd like to know what those with similar context use. Either via research (like Bulkowsky) or with your own experience.