Absolutely. I have run many trade histories of commodities advisories. You almost always did considerably better rejecting trades against the prevailing trend.
How is that different than trend? Taken from dictionary.com trend ânoun 1. the general course or prevailing tendency; drift: trends in the teaching of foreign languages; the trend of events. I'd agree that we are in a 20 year up trend. Buy, you cant lose.
I think all he is saying is that the past does not predict the future. If we knew (absolutely) the future, there would be no argument. Taleb calls this "epistemic humility", this comes in handy trading real dollars; has saved me a lot of cash and heartache.
""All methods of defining trends compare various combinations of historical price points. All trends are historical, none are in the present. There is no way to determine the current trend, or even define what current trend might mean; we can only determine historical trends." I think this is inaccurate. Methods of defining trends compare combinations of historical price AND present price. You can also define them with future prices e.g. "This market is going to trend higher".
I think you miss his point. He may concede that there *has* been a trend, but where is your evidence that there is a trend now? Also if you chart the Dow in inflation-adjusted prices, you may reach a different conclusion.
I disagree (except the semantics bit). A long-term drift will show itself in a pretty random way, whereas a trend is more stable and predictable. Examples: An uptrend consists of higher highs and higher lows. An uptrend does not have periods where there are large price reversals significantly below prior major lows. An upward drift can quite conceivably have large retracements below major lows. You could have ten years or flat or downward price movement, then another 10 years of extremely strong upward prices. Looking at stocks, it is clear that there is not a long-term uptrend, especially not in real dollars (adjusted for inflation). 1932 lows decisively smashed any uptrend. The 1974 lows did the same (once you look at it in real dollars). The 2002/03 lows smashed the uptrend of the late 1990s. If you had traded long stocks with a stop, you would have been stopped out during each of these periods.
You mean like buying last Thursday (or even on Friday/Monday)? Or shorting the S&P when it made a multi-year high in July? The 2000-2003 bear market in stocks also had some of the fastest and biggest rallies in stockmarket history. Fading trends can be a very profitable strategy.