Technical analysis doesn't work. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Sorry, that was too perfect a set-up. Your question is useless - there is no answer except in context, and there are so many different contexts. Are you talking about minute bars? 5 minute bars? 15? Daily charts? Weekly? Are you asking micro-scalpers? Investors? I don't think all forms of TA are useless, but I don't look at moving averages. It's my understanding that a lot of 'canned indicators' are based on MA.
There are many time frames... ticks, minutes, hours, days, weeks... an infinite # of lengths of averages... 1,3,5,10,20,50,100,200 etc and many types of methods to calculate moving averages... weighted, exponential,simple, geometric,displaced,triangular etc. They are all valid in that they can help show short,medium and longer term trends but they all generally have the attribute of being lagging indicators... measures of past price movements which isn't necessarily bad although people have to realize they are lagging and not "predictive" indicators. Actual price action which moving averages are derived from has no lag which is why I prefer trading from actual prices rather than averages... but if a person develops a moving average trading method that works... more power to them.
Anyone else remember how back in the good old days these things would just smoke everything? *wistful*