Nice to see a little more discussion about Pivots. So what I gather, along with any other tech indicator for that matter, they all work sometimes and don't work other times. In the end it all comes down to being a good trader in that you have to spread off risk, , money management, cut losses, understand price action..etc., because most everything is random.
I give my husband market numbers for Soybean meal and I have had good success using pivot, support and resistance numbers in conjuction with volume numbers. I get my volume data from www.chart-ex.com. It is free.
random, ya, but if the indicators r simple enough to 'monitor', just because its likely that loads of ppl r going to look at them and place trades accordingly around the levels, it does tend to generate some form of liquidity windows, not necessarily deep or significant, not necessarily all the time, but often enough... then its down to yr own skills etc as u said above