Thanks. Couple of questions (guess you'll be able to clarify yourself without bothering Dr. Brett again): 1) What is breadth applied to trading? 2) Is past volume (already traded) used?
Actually, this has been covered in prior discussions with you earlier. Like Raskolnikov suggests, charts are merely a graphical representation of data that is first tabulated in rows and columns. Technical analysis is a very wide field and there are multiple ways to analyze that data, with sole chart reading being only one of many ways. A lot of people seems to use a combination of statistical analysis and chart reading, which I personally believe in. As long as you're using past price as your input, you are in fact utilizing technical analysis. Any attempt to call it something else is pure vanity in my opinion. Of course, mastering technical analysis and putting together a robust system that can be used over time is not an easy task. I`m not there myself yet, but I'm learning and improving every day. I know that there are patterns and behavior that repeats themselves on a daily basis, because I see it again and again every single day. If you read Steenbarger's blog, it is fairly evident to anyone with more than half a brain that he does in fact use technical analysis. I will be happy to provide at least one article. If he choose to call it something else, that's entirely a matter of semantics and possibly vanity like I alluded to earlier.
Technical analysis is descriptive not predictive. Many writers including myself use it to describe things. It's very good as a descriptive tool. It also holds some value in getting an over all picture of the market--- certainly none for real time decision making. Despite what the Chartists claim
What if you work off technical levels, say, the prior day high, low, close, pivot point (even R/S levels), 50% retracement level(s)measured moves (statistically derived), etc, and then read the tape as price approaches and trades at those levels to gauge buying/selling interest? You can probably create a model based on that alone, but it is technical analysis regardless of what someone else may call it. I don't think you're as stupid as you make yourself sound, surfer, but you do sound stupid. It's no fun discussing with people like you, because you're more set on defending your principles and preconceived notions than you are to actually learn something new. I'm done.
Here's a descriptive chart from end of today's AM. It won't mean anything to a person like McSurfy who doesn't have the owner's manual with a complete glossary of descriptors like BO, FBO, lateral, RTL, PRV, RM, AM, midday, PM BO, etc. But the colors are nice.
PRV is the leading indicator version of "tape reading". Since the telegraph and teletype era, the tape had always meant relay operations. The serial dat flow works on two levels 1. P and V of an instrument, and 2. The sequence of instruments in a market. So taping reading is NOT PA trading. It is P, V or V, P trading. The board was on the wall and chalk and erasers ruled. Young ladies operated the board and they just carried srips of "ticker" tape. Guys smoked and sat in leather chairs. Brokers attended them. At 25 I looked 14 1/2; I was last carded at 42. So, I used the phone and pencilled charts from WSJ. Primarily volume bars (order of magnitude shifts were precise enonough) and geometry of parallel lines on price. 11 by 17 handed 6 months. I kept back pages of WSJ in quarterly bumdles so I could back plot 26 weeks by flipping pages where I underlined the row all in a matter of little time. RR refers to this as work. Surf only is as far as flipping coins????? During RTH I made an open phone call to place market orders (I was told the result. Slips came later by USPC. Then it took 6 to 8 days to make half of 20% moves. 7 moves doubled capital (about 2 months). Coattailing was vey popular. So training your broker was incentivized. Since their boook ws making money too. Data was shared too so coattailing went national. I got to sit with bunches of lawyers. In 30 years thnings changed. The big contracts went intraday. So I got 8 data points a day. During Greenspan era an FOMC netted 900 points per contract on the three SOP turns of the announcement. (DJX.X) PC's happened and the Bar was lowered. This meant higher money velocities for building wealth.
The truth is that those who use TA successfully DO NOT PREDICT. Past price does NOT predict future price. There is another facet: No one trades in the future. Many make mistakes of placing orders for execution in the future. systems of trading and observing markets only operate in NOW also known as the present. These are called "Trend Drivers" officially since I made up this term. So surf looks at "his experience" where prediction is employed by those he has heard of or reads about. He finds that prediction does not work. He adds to this belief that what he has heard is used to predict is TA (it isn't since prediction does not work). So he extrapolates his belief hat TA does not work and leaves off the words "for predicting the future". The future is unknowable. Only the Present is viable for trading. In the Present you "know that you know systematically" or you DO NOT know you know. All bars have names. They are named from any of the following work: criteria, filters, functions, rules or strategies.Or combinations of these are used to "wrap" things together using "operators" from three classes of operators.
here is the chart which proceeds from the prior suggestion for today's open (short at 12 to 30 seconds on bar 1)
Do you work for a broker? This seems like its directly out of the " how to extract max vig" broker handbook. Ok, Johnny, each trade has a random outcome but keep on trading ( and burning thru commissions) eventually the trades will lien toward profit. Geeeez!!!