That brings up a questions: Do you have stats on all your setups and know what % of the time they succeed? For example BDX closed below it's open yesterday, formed an NRB after a WRB, price has been moving down, and according to your records price will test the low of the WRB 95% of the time the next day. Do you keep stats like that?
Be patient and wait to see if significant support from mid Dec 09 and Feb 10 holds at just below 75, although it depends if you're playing for a swing or an intraday move. As if you were to short the break of the WRB low then you'd be shorting straight into obvious support, however the down bars are on increased volume, so not entirely clear cut.
It doesnt matter if there is a 90% chance of being "right". I need first to know where I would be wrong in the 10% chance. Inverse reward:risk doesnt appeal to me.
I wouldn't have felt comfortable shorting it until it got down to the $75.75 area where I could have put in a small stop. Or maybe a short after the 1st big green up bar with a high around 76. Could have used it's high for a stop after price continued back down. A good buy I suppose would have been near the low of the WRB after a double bottom or ABC pattern formed. Could have bought at 75.28 after the big green bar with another small stop.
Arguing about whether or not TA "works" is asking the wrong question in the wrong way: If it's cloudy, does that mean it will snow? In order for snow to happen when it's cloudy, a confluence of events must occur. In other words, it's a question that cannot be answered out of context. If. say, you expect to use an upward crossover of the MACD indicator as a buy signal for a long position and the stock you've chosen to trade is in a confirmed medium to long term downtrend, lags in its sector, underperforms the major market indices and the market is in a downtrend, then the chances of that trade ultimately being profitable are diminished. The signal would probably fail and if you traded enough of these you'd be convinced that TA didn't "work". Trading is about probabilities, just as weather forecasting is about probabilities, but neither can expect a significant chance of success unless many ancillary factors are considered in context.
Maybe the correct answer is I would've done nothing unless trading BDX fit my plan/process. I have no idea what exactly you look at to make your decisions, so it would be dumb to try to copy you. In fact you could be a 13 year old really smart kid living in your mom's basement who has only ever traded in a sim account while high on sugar. (I'm pretty sure you're not though). And in reality feel free to send me all your trading signals and the reasons for them. I'd be more than happy to review those for you.