Do Trendlines work?

Update to the chart just posted.
Price stopped dead in its tracks at the trendline.
Imagine that.

would like to see a test of lows now or a few bars of consolidation to consider a long

So, did the trendline work?
Well I guess that depends on the trader making an obvious resistance point work for him. It certainly "worked" as resistance.

 

Another update.

Dow did retest lows.
Has currently bounced from yesterdays close which is the horizontal line at the bottom and has come back to the intraday downtrend line and paused once again.

Depending on how you trade, there could have been several ways to make the trendline "work" for you already.

 

Trendlines don't work. The price is going to be determined by pure supply and demand at that moment. You can only look at the trend after the fact. Not to tell you were the stock will be.

 

Trend lines do work as one of your tools to determine the probabilities of price action.

If you look at MS, you could see where the previous trend was bullish and there were places where you could have gotten long.

Then the trend changed, and you could have sold the stock short.

If you expect the trend to continue forever, or only use trend lines to trade, you will not do well position trading stocks.

Also, not all stocks trend well enough to trade, so you need to determine which stock is trending. A trend is usually created by an event, say good earnings. The farther away you are from when the trend 1st started, the less likely it will continue. That is why some people say don't chase a trade since you may have missed the optimal point of entry using risk vs reward and money management.

 

great breifly put analogy

 

It would be great for you to actually read something within this thread and reply with an actual intelligent response to something specific.

Thanks

 

http://charts.dacharts.com/2008-11-03/Randy_2__77.png


I have no idea what this "chartist" is doing. But it sure looks serious.

 

go to ptv-innvesting .com, those are gann angles and #'s of days along in cycles,he explains some of this in his posts and uses a lot less of them

 

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Not needed perhaps, nor always exact reversal points.

But looking @ Jeff Greenblatt's article on 50 day moving average,[''Better Than Average'',Futures/Stocks mag,NOV],
on DOW cash .

Maybe helpful, better than average,if you like visuals & trendlines. Know of one CPA, he like numbers, not charts.

 

FWIW, I try to never use the words "always" or "exact" in trading.