In the words of some smart bastard, somewhere..... "history does not often repeat itself, but it frequently talks in rhyme" so...... look carefully - and listen for the rhymes
I find this amusing, every so often, I read from a post about how technology has changed the market place, more information, quicker information that allows the quicker trader to take advantage. It is all very funny. I have charts of Wheat going back to 1860's to present, if one takes away the prices, you can't tell if it is from one hundred years ago or last Friday. Yep, we have so much data now, but I believe that more data does not mean you will profit from it, nor will quicker data. Chart patterns that work now, worked 140 years ago. The bottom line is if you can trade, doesn't matter if you don't have all the latest information, nor the fastest cable speed, or fastest computer. You learn from the past how to adapt to the present.
seems like you have a good handle on it i have said on several occasions that history does indeed repeat itself - but in one respect the OP is correct as something that has already happened can not happen again - it is not possible however, similar events can of course occur at any time in the future, as we humans tend to think in circles and actually live our lives in little circles - some might call it a habit! we will never really know why the human mind operates like this and why we always keep doing things the same - until of course some major event happens in our life which kicks us out of the circle we are in and into another little circle - which is why i prefer to call it....The Circle of Life the reason the 200 day ma works is because every major pension fund manager has all his little boys watching it on the radar screen - change what they are watching and that will then work what i do find a bit silly though is the degree of analysis some people put into chart reading - some use so many ratios and inverse ratios that they are bound to hit a few of them - it is like gann lines and the little square boxes - draw enough of them on a chart and the price will eventually hit them, and then the trader thinks he has found something that allows him to work out what way people will think by using maths - to me this is the silly bit as a simple straight line will do just fine and the only maths that i think are required are addition and subtraction!!
i have read your post again and i must now agree with what you have said as it makes perfect sense to me new technology has indeed changed the market place and if i am to believe some of what i read then the level of automated trading has increased tremendously and continues to do so on a daily basis - mostly due to people being lazy but that is another discussion topic i was looking at cnbc some weeks ago and this nice looking girl with long black hair and glasses was showing a chart from one of the big trading houses - he was their leading TA analyst - and she was explaining how the head and shoulders was now in place on the S&P and how the market was now going to drop at last i said to myself - this is my confirmation of what i have just seen on the monthly chart - BUY NOW boy was i right and it has not been the first time i will be watching your posts from now on actually it was bloomberg not cnbc - i don't look at that one anymore as bloomberg is much better just gave it a 5 star rating but it deserves 100