I keep hearing that and it seems to make intuitive sense, but I can't make a determination one way or the other. Nor am I willing to commit the time to find out. On its own, however, it gives me the impression of being a wobbly way to trade.
I think the only people that know the math/indicators/price action, etc that the HFT's are using are the programmers, and those that hire them. All I have to work with is their footprints. I use candlestick charts with 20 and 200 exponential ma's for that. That's it. Doing decent enough just using those. I've tried all the others at one time or the other and not using them anymore.
These back and forth discussions/debates/arguments get quite tiring, even for me. Often times, even the anti-TA crowd gets something right eventually. It also doesn't help that some people who use TA actually don't agree all that much amongst themselves when things get technical, and this even evident right in this thread here. So wouldn't the best indicator of validity of anyone's method, the one true way to settle this, be to show that the person is making consistent money? It doesn't have to be on every trade, and it doesn't have to be every day, but surely the only thing that doesn't lie is your PnL. If your system works, your PnL should point up after a sufficient number of trades... simple as that. These arguments, without anything tangible, is no better than arguing about who's god is better. At least with trading, a PnL is a very democratic, non-discriminatory and unambiguous form of proof to settle this.
Why would they? TA means using historical market data in some fashion to time trades. That covers a fairly broad field, wouldn't you say? Why would you expect everyone who aligns to this very basic premise to march in lockstep?
Okay, so present your P&L and tell us what it either proves or disproves. Guys like Martin Schwartz and PTJ, among many other known traders, swear by TA. What will your P&L add to or subtract from what they have already said? Or, for that matter, the known traders who became rich and who have no time for TA? People who dismiss TA out of hand should first convince us why the known and celebrated traders who claim to use TA are supposedly lying. That is where the burden lies.