If you're proficient in "Price TA", you can pick where you might play for top/bottom. "Take a shot, with stop". Paul Tudor Jones once said, "I've made 10 times more money picking tops and bottoms than I ever made trying to avoid picking them". FWIW....
instead of "You", meaning nobody, those traders should of say " I" this is the legit comment and the answer to that - the top or the bottom is the end of the corresponding trend in the related chart's period this is classic ! So the main question is - Is it possible to find (anticipate) the beginning and the end of the trend... and we are not talking post-factum the answer is yes, expected reply to my answer - how? contra-reply: maybe you also want the key from the apartment where the money is stored
as for being the contrarian any good trader is a contrarian to the general public which runs the market like the chicken without a head that how money is made trader follows the method not the crowd the method (trader) assesses the crowd's movement so far and anticipates the next one, and the next and the next its a mix of reaction and pre-action - reacting on movement so far to predict the next step actually trader is not as contrarian as its seems , he just sees the end or the beginning before others see it...
I use monthly bars and use a percentage of the past, when prices enters zones, I then drop down to smaller timeframe and wait for a pattern that happens at all extremes of the time, and no...no offering the pattern. I have hedged for many years and have gotten very good at it. Plus, I have spent much time understand when wave tops/bottoms occur to hedge open profits, and all the while dancing options around the positions for little extra. And I never stop till I find the highs that hold, longest amount of shorts to date have been 23 in crude oil when it went to 147, finally hit the top and my aim in to add on way down and nail 75-90% of ten year range, which eventually I do. Many rollovers but rather do futures than ETFs to have more funds to do more volume in futures. You have to be patient when doing manual but now all automated.
Don’t squander this opp to discuss the subject that thus far after 200 years of market analysis, has come to a grinding halt, dead stop with TREND FOLLOWING. Quite an accomplishment and it works, works, works. But exploration has died there. Beyond TF is No Man’s Land. At ET calling tops/bottoms is frowned upon and trend following is only done in hindsight. 99.99% will tell you it can’t be done. They said the same about E=mc squared. Nothing is impossible
God visited your thread and dropped a nugget, nobody saw it. He said in a nutshell all verrrrrrry experienced traders trade tops/bottoms and that even a 1-min chart has top/bottoms and trend reversal. It rare for God to show up like this. His name is TraderGod. Do this: quit discussing this as a pie in the sky coffeeshop namby pamby disc, and instead use the golden opp we have NOW, the current Dow Jones top of Jan 26. Ask all to put up a trade in real time in your thread and watch all except God stampede to the exit