Damn MAESTRO! I'm not sure if I've ever read a more intelligent post on ET and there are few intelligent folks around. A few key words you used really jumped out at me: illusion, perception, subjective interpretations, experience, talent, and intuition. By far, the most important of them all is intuition. Douglas talks about this in his book and I couldn't do the discussion any justice. Trading in the Zone. Just read it. Great Post!
Thank you, I have read the book, of course. If you are interested in these kinds of books I have the whole list for you. Just say the word and I will post it.
My market perception has negative expectancy. Without my trading plan with its two core setups (repeating patterns, all day every day) and explicit rules (that I can teach to anyone with an average IQ and the ability to recall visual patterns), I'm a consistently losing trader. With the objective rules based on the technical analysis of past price action combined with the "if price does X, then do Y" methods of entry, I'm a consistently profitable trader. As long as the same illusion/delusion keeps working, I'll keep believing in it.
Profitable trading is not about the squiggly lines. Its about how the market reacts to those squiggly lines. Lets say your squiggly lines indicates a momentum pullback in a a market still above a recent 2 year high. The market chopped around in the morning and now it is just after lunch and the overall market is at support and your stock is at support. Two things good things could happen... your market could start up and go on into a trend up til the last half hour... Or your market could drop quickly to the next level of support. Your job is to make money if either happens... and lose commissions if it just chops around. can you do it. When I was younger I could do it almost every afternoon and did.
Nice track record ... are May & June 2013 blank because of no trading activity, or you are behind updating the spreadsheet, or ? That being said, isn't your edge consistently shrinking since 2009 ?
And you call it TA? I call it experience, intuition, anticipation, skill etc. Because if it was TA, then you would have the ways to explain it and teach it to just about anybody. After all, it is the very purpose of TA - formalization. But, you know that you cannot! And I bet you have tried, but those dumb asses would not get it, right? It only works for you and all the methods you developed over the years and the things to look for - they are not TA - they are your babies, your skill set, your intuition and you cannot teach that!
The May records are not audited yet. And my "edge" returns proportionally to the volatility levels. And, no, I would not say it is diminishing. The vol has died, so are the numbers. But it will pass, I am sure.