Amazing... Pro traders execute orders, so all they need is a number at which to execute. Retail traders mostly trade their own analysis & that analysis is mostly based on following strength/weakness, so a chart is required, though not a necessity.
Some are visually oriented. Some are numbers oriented. Do the best you can with what you got. It's hard to succeed with a secondary skill. Put another way. Some see it and some must analyze it.
My Excel formulas aren't very bright. They can't analyze charts so I am forced to look at numbers only
Besides formulas, Excel supports a programming language, VBA. A very powerful and relatively easy tool to learn. I'm a software engineer, so I have an advantage. However, I've taught many a trader without programming experience some simple VBA stuff and away they go. Give it a try.
I agree with you to a certain extent, but there is at least one way to mitigate the subjectivity of pattern recognition and the efficacy of that mitigation can be tested to derive probabilities for success. I know because I've seen it done and collected the data to derive the probabilities. I don't know about that particular program, so I can't say if it does this or not. Basically, though, it sounds like you are saying that because pattern-based trading sometimes provides "false positives", leading to losing trades, that it is invalid. But every methodology gives "false positives" otherwise no one would ever make a losing trade, no? No one would enter a trade without expecting it to be successful, even if you knew that your probability of success based on history was less than 100%, yet not all trades are successful. Let's say I know my winning percentage is 50%, I would still never enter a trade if I thought it would be among the 50% of my trades which lose, so I'm clearly getting an "all clear" signal to enter which is false. Yes, I can optimize and try to figure out the conditions under which those 50% can be reduced, but I'm still always left with some number of false positives. This is simply a reflection of the reality of trading under uncertainty. Also, my experience with pattern-based trading methods is that one pattern implies a specific sequence of events to follow with some probability X, so that the pattern is the set-up, not the trade. To take a simple example, you trade the breakdown from a H&S pattern, not the beginning of the left shoulder.
If I hadn't noticed something on a chart to help me formulate the hypothesis around which I built my system, I probably wouldn't have come up with the idea to test. But, since that point, I don't use charts. Does that mean I've graduated from the amateur ranks to the professional?
LOL, Patterns are not ever changing at all, they are the same a week ago, ten years ago and even 90 years ago as I have wheat charts going back that far. History continues to repeat itself. Just because you have not traded as long as I have can be the difference you don't see the history within patterns. No one book is to give to an end all on how to trade, but all books are there to be given ideas to how to trade better. It is the nuances that are learned through the years that define the 95% to the 4% to the 1% of the best traders. I believe the thirty years of staring at charts has allowed me to know when something needs tweaking. Staring at just numbers, where does one learn anything? Each bar represents history, each bar represents a relationship to another bar, group of bars, a years worth of bars. You just can't limit oneself to just stats, the charts allow you to see recurring patterns that offer nuances to be learned. And the Nuances are ways of money management to refine your skills in this craft. And yes, I do have three programs that are automated, not a manual trader all the time. And when I discover a new chart pattern, I test it.