I guess I was a bit too bold, just contemplating the legitimacy of the hundreds of indicators out there.
Have you ever looked into price action?! How can you say TA does not work. The charts cant tell you alot. Have you ever noticed periods of consolidation with very little price movement the charts are telling you the market is not certain. You have to interpret the charts as a way to find out what the market is doing. Look at support and resistance levels or price failing to make new highs or new lows, then later coming back to retest those new highs or new lows. If you think TA doesn't work because of indicators you have a lot of research to do. If signals given by indicators where profitable we would all be rich. Use indicators during the trade they are helpful in gauging the strenght of a trend.
The market, whether it be homes or stocks/futures, work off supply and demand. Do a search, plan to spend a lot of time, and start watching the interaction between price, volume, and lastly S/R. It's no quick buck method, it will take thousands of hours with any method. There are some good threads from the past here, and some good ones on traders laboratory. Last hint, look up wyckoff, VSA, volume based candles or market profile. They all have in common...... price and volume. If you want to augment them with market internals that's great too. Indicators such as MACD, and Stochastics lag, plain and simple, they are all derivatives of price. Can you make money with them sure, not very well, if you have awesome money management, but why start with a disadvantage?
lol agreed with anek. most college professors cant trade, so who cares what they think.. i trade using pure price analysis, no indicators just price, subconscious pattern recognition and game theory. i am extremely good at predicting turning points in the ES futures intraday. i am also very good at predicting when a support or resistance is likely to get taken out, and hence when to veto a 'bounce' trade. i never read any news at all. no fundamentals or economics. so if TA is bs then how come i have had 7 winners last week from 11 trades? (each trade is approx 2:1 risk reward) i guess i have just been getting lucky for years..
I just love it when these young(think they know everything) wannabee traders come in with their baseless assumptions about knowing different facets of market analysis. Makes me salivate at the thought of taking their money when they open a real acct.
Just want to point out the "credentials" of GGallin... He himself is one the all-knowing "Professors". http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?postid=2047539#post2047539
Damn right. 90% of people use TA and 90% of people lose their $$$. Do the math. Having an argument with a TA lover is like talking to a potted plant. No matter what you say, evidence you show, etc., they hear nothing. But they keep on believing it. AVOID indicators, Elliot Wave, Gann, Fib, astrology, etc. Learn to read Price Action
What is predictive and what is not looks nearly identical in retrospect; you can only know the difference as it is occurring. That is why there is so much confusion on whether or not TA holds predictive value. On most intraday time frames the chart is far too late for anything beyond the slimmest of edges.