Surf seems like a nice guy, also respectful and has a passion for trading which are all good qualities in my book. However, it's absolutely clear, he could not make TA work after years of hard work, so he has ingrained in his brain, that TA does not work, period; and he's not really alone, there are many who agree. Here's the thing with TA surf. Most of the time, the market has opposing signals happening simultaneously, which is why the market gyrates the vast majority of the time, vs moving hard or trending. Let's take patterns for instance. you might have a downtrending channel using a specific set of lines, and an uptrending channel using another set, both perfectly valid and both happening simultaneously; this is just an example, and it's not very rare to have such opposing signals, as I said, this is the norm, bears and bulls facing each other at almost any given time (Keyword, almost). The existence of tools with consistent reliable predictive power, are like pink elephants, for the sake of discussions, assume none , there's no magic wand out there, no matter what people say. However, here's something that does work, and it's most definitely TA. When you have spotted a bear signal go and search the bull signal opposing it, chances are you will find it. Now, you can use the failure of one, to confirm the success of the other, and noticing this phenomenon is where the true power of TA lies. If you have an ounce of an open mind regarding TA, dig upon this, otherwise, you'll forever remain in the dark thinking TA does not work, when it does work, you just have to use it in ways that are more reactionary instead of predictive and with extreme patience, because as long as you are in the gyration state, the chances of reliable reads are much lower. Pattern failures are golden but only when they confirm to us the success of another. I happened to use patterns as the example designated for TA, but you can apply Moving Averages, Oscillators, Price Action and what not to the above, as long as you have seen the light and begin by spotting the opposing signals, truly with no bias, and with good patience. Do not trade until there's a clear winner, and when you witness his winning characteristics, join as ally. ....and if you think I'm full of it, that's fine, but before ditching my suggestion, make an effort to try to find wisdom in my words. Best wishes.
Speaking of TA, recent article by Denise Shull once again confirms emotions are a heavy factor in traders decision making and TA is probably the best tool to gauge likely actions of other market participants. Original ET thread is here: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=264994
and that's the beauty of trading...someone without even a high school education but who's been observing markets for years and years and years....and hours and hours and hours on end....can literally "out trade" phd's and quants with degrees from ivory league universities...it's quite comical
Well, because no school actually teaches how to trade in practice. And finance/economics theory is not much of help even for investing, not even speaking of speculation/trading.
This is ridiculous and naive. No offense meant Many universities have trading rooms --- what do you think they do there? :eek:
depends on what you define as "quants have taken over the markets" if you're referring to their effect of simply providing liquidity then I agree with you... however to my knowledge quants, on average, are not delivering above average excess returns or returns that are any more spectacular than that which existed during the historical period before the recent wave of "quants".
True. Some are however, most are not. Just like the rest of the market. Overall the quant driven/reactive changes have taken much edge away from retail. Narrow spreads, Decilimazation, dark pools you can't access--- overall it's way harder now than ever---
yup, remember times when it was easy scalping for couple of pips. No way I can do that now. I contribute this to GFC massacre. Noone left to feed on.