Man, you just don't understand how TA works! All you have to do is add a second critter-ion that works one time out of five and that fixes everything!
I posted a Noobie Reading list in another thread, http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&postid=3552903#post3552903 FWIW, no book will teach you how to trade, that only comes with experience... at best these type of books will make you familiar with patterns and terminology, but not how to trade them... avoid all books which profess they will... For all aspiring traders, the books on psychology are must reads... [Douglas, Livermore, Graham] I neglected Elder in that post, and I am sure there are others... Investopedia is an excellent resource for information. Just keep drilling down links.
The amount of trolling that takes place on this site is ridiculous. I've yet to see a thread where people can have a serious discussion without someone insulting another person or hijacking the thread in some other fashion. This place is definitely detrimental to anyone aspiring to become a trader. On that note, I'm out. I'm washing my hands of this site.
I try to judge each post independently. I got some good PMs and there are a few good posts here. The subject matter we're discussing is so complex that I'm pretty sure nobody actually has an exact solution to these questions. I expected the answers to be heavily intuitive. However, I was hoping to get some people who've actually read the book to respond as to what they took away from it. Perhaps mention what techniques they built upon and what they avoided. However, a significant amount of posters here are just bashing books. I simply don't understand this conclusion on their part.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see TA as the study of the next price movement. The general theory I get from TA is that the next price movement is not independent, but partially dependent on the previous price movements. So for someone to say TA is crap it means that they believe the next price movement is independent of the previous price movements. However, from my understanding the evidence suggests that there is a correlation, hence TA.
I don't know what so smart is, but in the IQ sense I think I'm above average. However, I highly doubt I'm a genius. Lots of people have a quicker and stronger working memory than me. There's people who can remember everything by visualizing things into shapes at birth. That is not natural for me, although I haven't seriously attempted to do that. What I have is a desire to think logically, to use as little intuition as possible, and not to take my intuition or anybody else's for that matter, for granted. If somebody wants to learn how to think this way I feel that they most likely can. I don't see why a high IQ is required.
No. You conclusion is based on a notorious fallacy called "denying the antecedent". TA may be not effective for many other reasons and still there may be series autocorrelation. Let me help you to see your fallacy: Your argument is TA => partial dependent of next move on previous moves This is of the form P => Q Denying P and concluding ~Q is the notorious fallacy I mentioned. During medieval years when strict adherent to logic was mandatory, contrary to what people believe nowadays, committing this type of fallacy in public would cause inflict of great punishment. For example, one reason that TA is not working although there is partial series dependence, is because of throwbacks that render the patterns losers.
Since you are here I have a question for you 5 men dig 5 holes in 5 days how many holes dig 10 men in 10 days?
The next price movement is not dependent upon price history, but upon something which no TA addresses: price movement persistence.