I think Richard Dennis provided all the proof I would need that a purely TA-based trading approach can be profitable.
20 years ago lol. Adding to that fact is that Richard Dennis like most top traders was an excellent risk manager. Most people even on this site you can throw an 80% success rate at their forehead and they still manage to bankrupt their accounts over time because of incredibly poor risk management. Hence, you wrongly attribute 100% of Richard Dennis' success to technical analytical approaches.
Sometimes the entire news is digested into the price, often times, however, prices only partly reflect all new information. The reason is that many large funds operate on the basis of longer term holdings and hence make up their minds after digesting all news or waiting a few days before they offload positions or add onto existing positions. Whether there will be more follow through from the initial move or whether the initial move will be faded and reversed to 95% extent depends on how all market participants in aggregate digest and interpret such news, NOT based on price action but based on the news content.
20 years ago or 200 years ago or last night, a trend is a trend is a trend. Of course if I put up a successful trader who used a TA approach from just 2017, it could be argued that the approach had been just dumb luck by coinciding with a bull market or some such. The fact remains, Dennis initiated his approach with TA not FA, he certainly didn't run his money and risk management through FA, and his team made millions.
What's the difference between the emergency room and the regular hospital ward. They both seek a diagnosis of what the patient 'presents' -- and they both have prognoses. Just different time horizons, with 'acute' leaking into 'chronic', and 'chronic' leaking into 'acute.' If you're not aware of both, you're only getting half the picture, and are 50|50 going to screw up.
Disagree, a trend is not a trend, check out trend metrics 20 years ago, then 10 years ago, then 5, then recently. You will spot a pattern. I guarantee you because I have put in the time to analyze it already.
Agree and I might add, 100% screw up over time if someone only focuses on current and past prices alone. There are extreme events out there, some of which are not predictable, such as a flash crash, others very predictable, such as the EUR-CHF revaluation by SNB. Someone who is blind to such events will at some point with almost 100% probability hit such event that might spell an end to such person's trading career. If I had to choose I would definitely be blindfolded towards TA but see clearly to absorb fundamental data points. But luckily we can combine both as you put. There is a reason high frequency trading houses are extremely keen consumers of news and event risk and they accommodate changes to risk variables in their market making and potentially turn off quoting completely at certain times in certain assets.