The better question to ask would probably be; "Why after this long am I still not much further down the road to getting this thing sorted". My guess, undercapitilized. Not enough money to buy data, computers, software, other hardware. Not enough money to trade and to be able to weather some hits. No money for a trading program which allows you to create your own coding and backtesting. Then there are a multitude of other issues such as focus, distractions, screen time, discipline etc. So for someone on ET for 4 years and thousands of posts, it should not be a question of "What out there is the problem", but a question of"What am I doing wrong". My opinion, those who can't or won't code will struggle to ever get ahead in this game. Coding is the jet fuel required to get ahead.
For TA to be more effective, one needs to have some sort of charting tools and some programming knowledge.
No sir, I couldn't make TA work for me, so am doing study on whether I should continue searching for a working TA scheme.
The article and related articles actually said in those academic studies spanning 1897 to 1994, that TA worked. I just want confirmation from some of you that TA still works so I should not give up my search. Thanks.
Then don't do it on 22 years old knowledge. Would you built today a car like based on the technics of those 22 years ago? Or would you start from the technics used today? TA does still work today but it is not the TA from 22 years ago anymore. People got more professional, so TA improved too. But the tools we have are much better too, all charting software is much better and much cheaper now.
Tradestation, Ninjatrader, Supercharts... are a much better choice. Much more user friendly in regard to existing indicators (are you going to built them in excel???); the only problem is knowledge of programming.
I am sometimes surprised by the naivity of people who think they can be succesful with a MACD, bollinger band and what have you. I personally think these do not give a good edge. If it works for you fine but I moved on from standard indicators. I started to learn R programming and later switched to C# in Ninjatrader. Now I can build and try ideas in minutes. It is still very well possible to be succesful with TA but it requires a lot of effort and smart thinking.
You can get free tip on Excel stock charting here. Just change the year and month in the url to get for more historical tips. http://traders.com/Documentation/FEEDbk_docs/2018/10/TradersTips.html#item5 For serious TA, Excel wouldn't cut it. A simple screen on the stock database will generate millions of records and on top keeping stock data of entire stock market. I am using Excel 2007 and it couldn't take more than 1 million rows. But I do use Excel spreadsheet to keep track of my daily TA analysis e.g. stocks above 50MA for the past 90days etc. I use perl to automate my TA analysis and dump the results to Excel. Amibroker for charting reading and screening. I wouldn't recommend Amibroker as it is very difficult for newbie to learn. schweiz has recommended some good charting tools that you can consider.