well, surely we can agree TA is a vast field. Oscillators, stochastics, all of those indicators... god, who could be bothered with tracking it all. I can only speak for my own work, but it has been documented by a few. I know that if I handed it to anyone, it could be used to make money in the exact manner that I have it laid out now. It would have to be pried from my cold dead hands, of course. (which, is why I don't understand why people ever make threads about how to trade... I could never give my work away, especially for what it has cost me...) So... I understand your POV now. You're speaking of what many would call 'mainstream' TA which is sold in books, by vendors, etc... right?
Well, the indicator category is broad, just as the pattern category is broad, but they are nonetheless just categories that branch off from the study of price behavior. Remember that traders were trading off price behavior long before indicators.
yes, absolutely. It's the same issue that has been missing from the TA Crusades - context. Definition. Define your variables first and then let's pick them apart scientifically to see if the rules proposed by you (generally, not directed at anyone) provide a greater than 50% probability in all historical testing, across all instruments. If so, then the next step is to run the same rule sets in live environments to assess their accuracy in real-time. If they match, then you have something viable. I really don't get what is so difficult about this to understand. Yes, a blanket statement that "TA WORKS HNNNGGGG!!!!" is retarded. But if I have proof of my own viability, and I have tested it objectively and had others do the same (while keeping my source / formulas to myself), then I know I have something viable. I suspect most don't do this, though.
Most of it has to do with age. Remember that we are now at the 20-year mark with regard to relatively common use of the internet. So those who are 30 or younger don't know anything else. Those who are 50 or younger don't remember a time before indicators. To them, TA is indicators. But then few of them ever learned how to read price. Which to me accounts for a great portion of the failure rate: they don't understand what they're looking at.
Actually I've been doing it for the past two years. one year here. I was wrong in November when I forecast a return to the LL of the trend channel. Instead we bounced off the median and drove back to the UL, where we've hovered ever since until last week. Is there some special significance to "20"?
20 would give you a 10% success rate, which is about right. But no, not really, just a easy to type number on phone. But you can't remember all your predictions you got wrong, that's the issue. Some, might be profitable, claiming to use TA but actually aren't using TA, they've got there own logic going on, they aren't even fully aware of. As Surf/Lucy says define what your TA is, then we can back test it objectively. Indicators and Candle stick crap don't work, yes they can show where the market was going, but they have ZERO predictive ability. But you can make profits of coin flips, if your a good trader and can kill losers quickly and the tricky part, let profits run, without letting profits become losers and taking loses which become profits shortly after.
Again, I focus on the behavioral aspect of TA. I don't use indicators nor do I use candles. As for predictive ability, again, it's a simple matter of knowing how to draw a trend channel. This has been common knowledge for a hundred years.