Isn't TA anything that uses historical price data? it's a umbrella term that covers a lot of different areas. Every thing from crazy stuff like astrology to statistical quant models. Subjective methods like chart patterns to objective methods like heavy statistical number crunching using quant methodologies. One have to divide it into different sub groups. Lot's of it is pure garbage while other areas of TA is very usefull and valuable.
Whether you only believe in charting, or Technical Analysis, or planets/cycles or fundamentals or mixtures, ALL of this are nothing but filters to take a defined approach that may or may never be backtested. Same people most years will be profitable regardless of the approaches taken, some seldom/never have losing years once they get to correct status of concepts of their beliefs on how to trade. Trading can be defined as simple as a game of checkers, if you never have studied at all and play against someone well seasoned, you most likely will lose a very long amount of time. Knowledge is the "edge". To a seasoned trader/investor, more important in how to play the game than sake of profits, but usually profits are there not by which approaches actually work overall, but by the experience of the trader themselves that use them.
This discussion has already be made in numerous threads and in thousands of posting without any result. Are you getting paid for reopening this again and to generate thousands of new postings that are unnecessary? Everything that needs knowlegde is in a constant evolution. 22 years ago is like in prehistory when it is about trading. Are the cars, computers, houses.... from 22 years ago still the same?
Seems weird a poster who's been here for nigh on 4 years and three and a half thousand posts later is bringing this question up. Been thinking lately, maybe maturity or lack thereof is the key to trading related problems.
On the contrary, these threads give insight into the biases and issues that losing traders carry with them. Knowing what people are doing in order to lose money and why they're doing those things are helpful knowledge. They're fun to bait too.
Can you build a house with an hammer? Some can, some can't. The important thing it's not the tool, but the ability to use it. Some guys can craft amazing things with a simple knife. It doesn't mean that anybody can do the same. So my answer would be: Yes, No, Maybe, it depends.
To use a metaphor, it’s a a lot like mountaineering and it’s subset ‘rock climbing.’ There is a commone goal that unites all whom desire to achieve being at the top of a mountain. Mountains themselves come in all different shapes and sizes with accompanying difficulty and necessary preparation, training and skill to accomplish safely. Some enjoy using well marked & worn paths that can simply be walked up. Others bring more tools so they may access routes, vistas and experiences that are not possible any other way, still others would prefer just to drive their car. The difficultly increases depending on the terrain and how many others have gone before and whether they mapped out what they did. In this domain the more technical one chooses to get, the more specific and specialized the tools become. The tools themselves being just an extension of a way of thinking. There are those whom will pound steel stakes into the rock face, others that will use cam devices and wedges to place into cracks and be more ‘leave no trace’ about it. Still others whom achieved such a state of skill and mind, they can ‘solo’ without the need for any of the above. What an expert can do is different then a beginner, having an experienced partner can open up even more of things that a beginner would claim is just ‘not possible.’ All must exist in a fundamental humility for a mistake depending on method can be catastrophic no matter the method or preparation. For those that enjoy being ‘technical’ with the use of ‘protection’ that they can choose to place in rockface cracks an axiom emerges of where and how often to place that protection - ‘never higher than you are willing to fall.’ Most would know this intuitively, others require a direct experience of falling and others whom deem the whole affair not of there own liking and still others whom doing everything that was told and taught still experienced catastrophe. So the fundamental difference between those that say TA does or does not work for them is a varied as the minds and methods that attempt scaling a mountain to it’s peak. The vista that can be seen, only a minority will ever enjoy by how they respond to two common scenarios. What do they do after falling ? What do they do when encountering a ‘crux.’ ?
I too know what I need to know (to make money) but there are additional benefits to posting - otherwise WTF are we doing here?