1040 and broker log or go home... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9INzbx247zM If you click on this video and it doesn't load, your IQ will still go up 10 points.
Great! So Babypips is a guru when it comes to trading markets in the past. Yeah, I'd of sold the high too! Who wouldn't? The fact is, money moves the market. end of. Funny shapes on a chart do not. Do you really think some fund is going to drop >$50 million notional clips in to the market on the back of some funny shape or magic line? (Jack H may, but he's another story...) I happen to know for a fact they do not. They may look at a chart from time to time, but only to get an idea of where levels are as a general reminder. Take a look at the Bloomberg hedge fund data base (or any other such as Barclays, Eurekahedge etc). Look at the styles/categories of different funds. These basically tell you about the trading strategy/approach used by the funds. You will see categories such as Stat Arb, Equity long/short, Macro etc. NOWHERE WILL YOU SEE TECHNICAL ANALYSIS. If the pro's arent using TA as a strategy, should you be? Why do you think they dont use TA? Remember some of these firms spend MILLIONS each year on data mining and other research. Geez - what a bunch of jokers! All they had to do was draw a magic line on a chart!....
Big institutional players and self-fulfilling prophecies. Why would institutional traders and professional money managers tell the world how they trade? They don't give that away with words. Like all large animals, they do, however, leave footprints quite visible to the naked eye. How many of those posting to this site are institutional traders or professional money managers who have to trade into and out of very large positions? We're not the "pro's" you're referring to. We're the retail traders who learn to use the footprints of those large animals to identify where they're most likely headed in the next [insert your trading time frame here] and if that likely destination is attractive enough for us to follow along. We also learn what the footprints look like when the herd is spooked or decides to move to a different watering hole instead. That's called a stop loss, something us dumb amateurs use to prevent getting trampled when that happens. Why do so many people posting here have this irrational belief that small retail trader has to trade like large institutional traders/investors? The big boys have to outsmart each other; they don't have to outsmart Joe and Jane Baby-Pips.
There's always going to be a group of non believers. Best thing is put them on ignore. If aspiring traders don't wish to learn patterns with high probabilities of repeating, that's their loss.
Any type of analysis, in and of itself, will not work. I've watched many traders try to make it in the markets over several decades and the ones who succeed -- the very few -- have an innate ability to read the markets. The closest thing to the holy grail is the ability to read price action and develop the ability to "just know" where the market is heading. Call it a 6th sense, intuition, whatever word you want to use -- no need to get caught up on semantics. All winning traders I've met have this ability. I'm not suggesting TA, or whatever type of analysis is of no use because TA is simply a tool of ones choice to help a trader navigate the markets. I use it daily, as do I use statistical analysis but I can tell you from intuitive knowledge the best intra-day pattern to buy is a head and shoulders top. Three bars below the neckline and it will reverse upward on cue -- not always, of course. Find a way to "get yourself in the zone" and you will discover the missing link.
Interesting........do you trade real money for your own account or a fund/trading firm? Or do you just like to talk about others who do?
You are right surf...... "About half of Jonesâs trading depends on technical analysis using historical price charts to predict market moves." http://www.hedgefundsreview.com/global/hedgefundsreview/fund_profiles/T/04_Jul_-_Tudor_Inv_Corp.pdf Want some more examples.....go read Market Wizards I through IV.....most if not all use some form of price action/TA...... Although I do know one guy who believes TA is rubbish......hint.....he blew up his fund twice...doing the same thing !!!
Not a fan of conventional technical analysis. However, I'm a huge follower of unconventional technical analysis. Bottomline is you gotta do your homework. I suppose this is why there are so many non believers.