Waffly nonsense! Perhaps you could explain your process in a special case that doesn't give away your 'secret'. A good place to start is to explain what you mean by the "success of the technical indication".
Not really sure what I mean anymore as nobody, except for the guy in Starbucks, seems to understand. So I'll try again with another example. Let's say that from your study, research or from what you learned somewhere you know that 86% of the time the price movement in an advance/decline will be made up of no more than 3 waves. Now, on your chart a technical indication, such as a new high followed by a picture perfect reaction that has remained above the previous low has formed. However, it has formed on the 3rd wave in the advance. So, given that the odds favor advances ending on the 3rd wave you decide not to take the trade and look elsewhere for a better opportunity. Focusing just on the technical indication itself, and ignoring, or not giving due weight to the various parameters that can make or break the trade would certainly have a big effect on one's performance.
You ust be talking about stocks where positioning and no new negative catalysts account for bullish patterns to complete and behave as YOU expect. There seems to be other markets or assets such as gold, currencies , bonds where new, significant data is entering the market and more likely to surprise and break an expected price pattern.
Sounds like you are talking about elliot wave theory. I do pay attention to these things. The earlier you get in a trend the safer you are.
No, not specifically Elliot or Dow theory so much as just one of the basics of price movement. That was just the simplest example I could think of at the moment.
I provided as simple an example as I could think of in a reply to Simples' post above.. This is no well guarded secret, but simply one of the very basics found in the study of price movement, and the importance of which I had hoped an inexperienced TA trader would find informative, just as the guy in Starbucks had.
I don't understand what you've said either, so I'm not saying I agree or disagree; but I'd like to note that it is possible that the starbucks guy simply said "ok, gotcha, I understand" or whatever he actually said, because he didn't want to have a long, drawn out discussion about the matter.? No?