Could you tell us exactly how many "hundreds" of what "years"? And exact what instruments do have historical data of "hundreds of years"?
Trend lines appear in financial markets going back hundreds of years - some trend lines having stayed intact for decades. I am sure glad a lot of people do not believe in trend lines or Classic TA. As long as the majority of the crowd are non-believers that tells me I have a bright future. Many veteran traders keep a close eye on the 10 year. This multi-decade trend line break sent the stock indexes in a panic. Here is the DOW (YM) testing a broken trend line which was a great spot to add onto an existing short position, or get short if not already.
Im not sure if it can be agreed that majority of the crowd are non-believers... The retail trading community is noctorious for "pure technical" traders. If you ask me, I would actually say that majority of the crowd are non-believers of fundamentals.
Wow, that 30-year interest rate chart is amazing. Also, when the security narrows inside the channel, that is sometimes a sign that it is ready to break out of the channel. This one is textbook: It stays in the channel for a long time (decades!). Then it begins to neglect to touch the channel boundaries (stays in the middle). Then it breaks the channel. The interesting aspect of this chart is that it is the Treasury interest rate. It's not a typical stock getting bid up and sold off inside a channel over and over... it is a government interest rate. Very twilight zone!
Mr Gumby, that looks a helluva lot like a wedge pattern poised to break positive. No? Lower highs with a pseudo-triple(or quad) bottom... (The YTD chart you have there...)