I think of your "right trend line" as a projected memory. When price, now, bumps up against this collective market memory you sit up and take notice, now. You do not say with any certainty what will happen next but when it does go one way or the other, now, you do what the market tells you. No prediction.
Jeez this is hard. If you don't believe that the "bounce off the trendline" or the "break through the trendline" has a higher probability of profitable continuation than the opposite move then you wouldn't take the sodding trade. How hard is this. You take it because you PREDICT continuation of what it is telling you. All else is self-deception. I give up - its no wonder that there is always someone foolish enough to take the other side of my trade.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. Humans may try to predict using a computer but the computer itself is only capable of reading signals and acting on them. I suppose the next question is can a human become a computer?
LOL! I hate to break it to you but a one period SMA is meaningless. So knock yourself out connecting the dots but it's still NOT differentiable at the data points and you won't be able to tell if the market is rising at any given point without looking at one or more PAST data points. As for your so-called continuous right trend lines, those are nothing more than extrapolations of PAST data into the future. Nobody with a knowledge of the topics you mentioned would post such foolish claims.
It's all about probabilities, so if you buy, you are working out probability that it will go higher in the timeframe you have. if you sell, you are thinking probabilities favor the downside. If you wanna call that predicting, then so be it. But when economists make predictions, better watch out! http://lauristonletter.blogspot.com/
I learned from predicting things, I couldn't break the habit because I was good at it more often then not. Even now though I use the prediction as a basis. I work from there, and trade the price action post analysis.
So what you're saying, is that when you see "X" (where "X" could be price pattern, inter-market relationship, dual/triple confirmation, etc.) and you determine that price action should then do a "Y", and if it does, then you would enter position "A", and if it doesn't then you would either i) do nothing and wait for the next setup or ii) or enter position "B" (which is always the opposite of position "A"). Sounds good. JJ
You actually only need to determine if the market is doing continuation or change now. It is sufficient (in futures) to establish what is happening in the now of a 5 minute bar within the larger context. I detect some frustration and hostility in your post.
If it always does as you have "bet" continuation or change, then you are not predicting. However sometimes you play continuation and you get change and vice versa. Unless you are 100% correct then you are predicting. Below is a quote showing less than 100% performance in continuation or change guessing. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote from PointOne: chuckle The Nikkei just did a "stall turn". A variant on the FTT, retrace, reverse sequence, more like DU->FRV. Yesterday I misidentified several FTTs on the Nikkei and tried shorts as it kept chugging upwards. Seems obvious in hindsight (was also last day of March contract so maybe I should have known there would likely be convergence to a target close?). Great contributions from everyone the last few days. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wake up dood. You are predicting.