ALL TA works in hindsight, as shown on 'easymon1's' chart. If it were that easy we would all be rich and the market would seize up. Trend lines show what happened in the past. Money management...ah...another debate?
Here we go again! So what DO YOU think Algo bot use, UFO contacts, psychic powers? WHAT? It is a rhetorical question I am pretty sure you have no fucking clue what you are talking about.
...or fundamental analysis.. I mean every trading decision whether automated or manual is "price action" based. I love these kibitzers are saying "let me assure you...blah blah blah, yet their version of the "story" is missing. Surely they have never traded...
Any trading decision made by either algo or manual is a price action based. The ONLY alternative to that is fundamentally based decision. You cannot seriously think High-Frequency trading algos' make their decisions based on fundamental analysis (and then change them 5 seconds later)? Do you?
You have not clarified what do you mean by "price action based" so I still do not fully understand logic on saying that "Any trading decision made by either algo or manual is a price action based" but OK with that. According to wiki: "The price action is a method of billable negotiation in the analysis of the basic movements of the price, to generate signals of entry and exit in trades and that stands out for its reliability and for not requiring the use of indicators. It is a form of technical analysis, since it ignores the fundamental factors of a security and looks primarily at the security's price history." There are lots of strategies that utilize hft in today's markets. Different arbitrages, like cross-asset/cross-market/latency/relative value Liquidity supply, like your typical market making/spread trading/rebate capture/quote matching Liquidity search, like spoofing/quote staffing/pinging/sniffing Also your typical mean-reversion/event driven/momentum based directional trades So where does your price action trading or trend line trading come into play? Do you really think if two market makers meet they discuss about trend lines on different time frames, price patterns or anything else retail uses. Or perhaps they would discuss volatility - Risk-Reversal/Skewness/Moneyness Most known market making model is perhaps Gloster-Milgrom model, where central idea is to estimate true value of underlying asset on terminal time/price. But even then there are models that does not rely on the existence of a terminal time/price. Instead, they are trying to find fundamental price, which evolves over time to reflect both the information content of trades and arriving of unanticipated news. There are also algos who can read tweets/news, by indexing every word/phrase and taking trades by the time you blinked and read the title. But maybe I have misunderstood how things work. Please, do educate me!
Looking at higher highs or lower-lows is the basis of price action trading and TA in general. Now you only have to draw a line between these higher highs and lower lows, and what do you get? Yes, you have guessed right...a trend line! Not all algo bots or shall we call them programs are arbs...and BTW not all algo bots are profitable! They are only as good as their maker. Most institutional players look at volume adjusted price(vwap), but how can you not call it "price action"?
Trend lines always work - after all it is simply plotting a line, it's just information. How anyone chooses to use it for trades is on them.