TrendLines are moving averages. A lot of trend following systems use moving averages. As people keep saying, money management is more important than the signal.
Its not true, they're not MA's. MA's are mathematically calculated and cannot vary no matter which trader is looking at the chart. TL's are projections of our own analysis and many traders will plot different TL's on different gradients and directions and significantly varying numbers of TL's. Where TL's and MA's are similar is that they're both poor entry signals. Yes, MM is waaaaay more important than the (entry) signal.
position sizing can contribute strong as part of "money management is more important than the signal"
@GloriaBrown Unfortunately, I have no stats for this particular case - just a huge number of screenshots for years of trading including stocks and futures. I`ve also found some old charts (late 60`s) and tried to apply trendlines there, and they also performed well. Thus, despite I have no .xls file with stats, I can say that if the price crosses the trendline and consolidates on the other side in approximately 70% of cases it would pass the distance equal to the distance from the trendline to the opposite high/low. You can also find stats on trendlines in "Encyclopedia of Charts Patterns" by T.Bulkowski. He provides very rigorous research on this issue.
I scan through the book and cannot find anywhere saying how he comes up with the numbers in his book. Look like he just looks at the charts and "feel" how many times those patterns work. I doubt this is scientific at all.