Good luck, I hope you find something. My experience alone and with my group ( who test these types of things 1000's of times a year) have never found anything worthwhile looking in the direction of TA. surf
Fire your quants. There is stuff that works. No one's going to prove this to you. You need to find it for yourself.
I only have one quant-- LOL! the rest are a collaborative group I am part of--- There certainly are ways to make money in the market, good luck on your search! surf
Actual trading. Truthfully, I pretty much failed with the affiliate marketing business. My sites were never able to draw enough traffic and I never made more than a few $100 after spending much more on marketing efforts. surf
I agree that the behavior of a bunch of little retail traders has little effect on running price, except in very low volume periods such as NY lunch hour. However, a bullish hedge fund manager isn't going to slap on major size all at once and even if s/he was inebriated and decided to do so, it would likely be at a price zone that indicated value. I've heard interviews with farmers who have to use futures to lock in their prices and they say they use price charts to do this! Reading price action is choosing to trade at levels where many "large eyes" are seeing potential value. If price sets up a pattern that tends to result in a directional move more often than not, you jump on the wagon and hope the ride isn't too bumpy