I can disprove this statement because I just found something that I could not find any information for. It must be the holly grail! I'm going to get rich! Oh, boy!
Now we know who is who. Those that answered "It's true" are traders. Those that answered "not true" are snake oil sellers. And looks like the latter prevail on ET boards.
That's one opinion. I could just as easily state the reverse. Without any proof to back it up, it's irrelevant. As jbt pointed out, Bollinger Bands are EXTREMELY well known and still work if you know how to use them. In fact, ALL technical analysis was originally taught by someone, sometime -- to thousands or millions of people. Many stayed with the original usage, many others tried to tweak their indicators to improve performance. Most are not vain enough to think that they've invented something unique. Every "tweak" I've ever seen has been done before, and I have no doubt that 99.9% of all secret "proprietary systems" are BS that some 18-year old kid in his bedroom independently arrived at as well. But we'll never know, since everybody thinks their magical system is so good it should never be revealed lest it self-destruct upon exposure to sunlight. Maybe we've ALL got the same secret system. Who knows? You wanna talk snake oil? I've seen "proprietary systems" going for $25,000 that turned out later to be nothing but a few standard indicators, mildly tweaked to kick ass in backtesting. The snake oilers are the people who claim they've found the Holy Grail and that despite its universal and eternal greatness, will fall apart like a '76 Lada in a Hurricane if others ever used it. Their secrecy, and their weak explanations for why it must remain secret, are just tools to justify the insanely high prices they demand. Have you seen the TurtleTraders' system? Nothing I didn't know already on my own. Nothing. But I didn't have to pay thousands or sign an NDA to learn to "Follow The Trend(TM)." Every chart I see posted here (or on other trading sites) either has a moving average, or MACD, or stochastics, or candlesticks on it. Every one has some standard TA attached. The theory in this thread seems to be that standard TA can't work if other people are using the same thing, which is obviously wrong. Are you going to tell NihabaAshi that he's about to go down in flames because somehow the secret of "candlesticks" has been leaked to the nefariously cunning Japanese? I currently trade quite successfully using standard stochastics, a moving average crossover, and some secret proprietary money management I call "Stop Losses". If you want to buy my winning system, PM me. Have your VISA card and some lubricant handy. If anybody thinks I "invented" my system and that NOBODY in the known world is using stochastics and an MA crossover, they're insane. I would bet that more people trade using the same system I do than any other. And I am net profitable. There is essentially no difference between saying "TA doesn't work if others know about it" and "a system using TA doesn't work if others know about it", unless the system is so fragile and overoptimized as to be worthless anyway. See my previous posts.
Just because many of the TA systems for sale are fraudulent doesn't mean it's impossible for any TA system for sale to be profitable. A correct statement of the value of a system's exclusiveness would be, "The greater the number of users of a given system, the more difficult it is to respond early to the setup conditions of that system and get in ahead of the crowd."
That is the problem here as some of us noticed it already too. Catching phrases such as 'there are no secrets in the markets' are nice, but the reality is dirty and hiding it beyond the facade of catchy phrases gets you nowhere... The demand and supply will catch with you sooner or later depending on the system popularity, the market liquidity, the system entries, etc. Every system and every market should be considered individually and if you believe that you are better off keeping your secret to yourself then do it even if some people would tell you that there no secrets. That does not yet mean that the system will be ruined, but it will be affected in some way and thus less efficient.
I agree. This point becomes more clear if you trade a illiquid market and observe how difficult it is to get a fill at obvious support/resistance or other TA 101 points on the chart. Who is left to take the other side of the trade?