Smart! Main benefit of ta is figuring out how to manage trades using directional volatility, and position sizing to go with it. Simplest valuable ta signal to use is expanding ranges on high volume in an uptrend. See SQQQ daily 90-day chart. Ta is much less important than scaling, re-entries, timing, anticipating reversals. It's useful, but not nearly as valuable a part of successful trading process as I'd thought it would be 20 years ago. In order of importance: 1. Managing risk/early exits 2. Choosing the best charts to trade: high volatility 3. Position sizing, scaling in/out 4. Volatility and price action trend 5. Technical analysis of chart patterns I wish I'd known that. 20 years ago.
I'm the mood to argue with an dolt tonight on the interwebs so I'll take on the guy who made the video in the first post. First of all, did anyone not see it coming that this was not going to be a chart of any financial market? He could have just as easily used a randomly-generated chart and found these same structures. Adam Grimes addresses this in his book "The Art and Science of Technical Analysis" as have many others. The first problem with Mr. TA is BS is that he is looking at these patterns as patterns only, from the most superficial perspective, instead of as auction market structures which can reveal insight into accumulation and distribution. The significant thing about market structures isn't the "patterns", it's the auction market process that creates those "patterns". Wyckoff as well as Market & Volume profile get into the nuts and bolts of market structures in great depth and specific detail. I'll just say this as clearly as possible: TA isn't about patterns, it is about auction market structure. As for it being a coin flip which way a market will eventually resolve a structure, yes, in a sense it is. However, if you can find an valid edge, then test it and adjust as necessary over a some certain period of trades, you most certainly can eventually find something with probability on your side. Because as every successful TA trader knows, trading with TA isn't about predication, it is about probability. As far as traders being millionaires - as if, because they are not, this somehow invalidates TA - this is the most ignorant perspective possible. Mr. TA is BS gripes about all the books he bought, unfortunately he must have bought all the wrong books and watched the wrong videos if he thinks being filthy rich is a realistic barometer of trading success. There is no endeavor or profession on the planet that has more scammers and scumbags than trading. He must've watched all those YT videos promising 100% Returns and all that blah blah blah foolishness, then been disappointed when he didn't own a villa on the Riviera in three months. Traders accumulate wealth over time and the rate of that wealth accumulation is dependent upon a number of factors: Your initial trading account size. Whether or not and how much you add to that account through other financial resources or whether or not you remove money from that account and how much. It is dependent upon risk and money management. And after all that it all comes down to compounding. In the thread linked below I provided the OP with proof that TA works via links to several successful teachers and traders who show their real stuff and are quite talented and go into considerable depth. I'm not interested in proving to anyone that TA is not BS, that's just silly, but if one wishes to invest their own time and effort, these links are an excellent place to begin to understand market structures in auction markets. https://www.elitetrader.com/et/thre...al-analysis-works.367351/page-31#post-5636121