Thanks. I try to be objective really and don't have a need to defend anything but truth. If TA "works" for me, I say it works. It is not fully quantifiable for me and probably 90% mental and only 10% "setups related", I admit it. If I find a better way to trade, will say so too.
TA is over 100 yrs old so of course there has been and will be developments in how to trade the markets and especially so since the advent of computerized trading. Fads can be born overnight and die just as quickly with a change in regulation, taxation, technology and HFT is vulnerable to all of these. HFT can make a mess of the 1 min chart but you can see the game and on bigger time frames the algos are lost. GS can front run the market for now but look at what happens their FX calls where they can't game it. TA worked in the past and the charts are still the same. It never stopped working but faster plays took over and now markets are traded by guys who have no concept of where the market is going - the next milliseconds are their keyhole view. The biggest day trader I know uses TA and only TA to trade 4000 - 20000 ES in one block. A guy I trade with every day has a $1m+ day about once a quarter and the rest are big bucks and it is all TA. There is another huge TA guy posting a few tiny comments in this thread but non of these guys are interested in making a proof thread. The whole point of this thread was to allow TA naysayers to show TA failures by posting a chart and demonstrating how it doesn't work. Only one guy stuck his neck out and showed it not working in his view. TA traders don't have to be the fastest off the block. We don't need a millisecond signal and we don't need to take every trade. Every time frame has give away clues and when they set up that is all that is necessary. About 25 yrs back I used look at the quarterly trading championships in Barrons and that was the best of the best trading ideas at that time. The top 10 guys had their phone numbers listed and I used to talk with every one of them and exchange ideas. Every single one of them was using TA and 8/10 were using the same idea. Can anyone show me how a chart today is different from 100 years back and when the point was reached that the TA stopped working? The fact is there are 3 styles of TA: Great TA, average Ta and crap TA. The whole point of this thread was not to prove TA works, but to prove bad TA won't work. You can by all means take the view that TA doesn't work,or say there is something better, but if you take that view because you have tried TA and can demonstrate it doesn't work, then why now show how it has failed. The means there is a real learning point focus rather than this random walk down Wall Street. I took up the challenge to give a lecture at a university to TA naysayers letting them call the charts and leaving everyone of them in silence. Was Oilfxpro correct in his opinion? Yes he was. Was he correct in his use of TA? No - that would fail a TA exam. Will great TA work for everyone? Nope! Not even for 50% of traders because there is a 400lb gorilla in the room no has touched on. It seems that topic needs another more contentious, politically incorrect TA thread and I hope you will participate
So, lets start where we all agree: TA shows the activity of buying and selling in a market. It shows human behaviour patterns - whether that behaviour was carried out by an individual, or a view was expressed through an algorithm. In other words, the chart shows the aggregate of human behaviour. Now, this is where the fun begins.... Think of all the other human behaviours that can be recorded and thus displayed on a chart. Sales of a companys products for example show buying behaviour... Political Polls... Countless other opinion and marketing surveys... Psychological reports... Crime statistics... etc, etc.... The list is endless. THEY ALL SHOW MANS BEHAVIOUR TO THE WORLD AROUND HIM. Just like the market. Now think of the money at steak in the findings of these reports and studies. It aint small coin is it? So, dont you think that if TA had any quantifiable value, some bright spark would apply the TA theories to this other information? I can see the boardroom at Ford Motor Company now - looking at their quarterly sales chart: "Hey fellas, we've got a head and shoulders top here, and MACD has turned over - looks like were gunna sell less autos next quarter - better lay off the work force", OR will they perhaps ramp up marketing, lower prices and get us to buy more cars - putting the chart back in an uptrend? Unless the causes are fundamental - in which case that can be seen in GDP and other economic figures, just as well as a chart. All a chart is good for is seeing if price is going in 1 of 3 directions - oh and for taking money off others who use it for anything else. You decide.....
Correct. All of these are subject to predictions based on trends and many future plans are made on the basis of those predictions. Come the end of the year the election coverage will bombard us with trend predictions. Don't you know how transnational organizations plan ahead looking at past and present trends?
Of course they analyse the data, but they do so with valid statistical techniques. They dont go drawing magic patterns and lines all over the place, looking at false break outs, applying RSI studies and other nonsense do they. (Lord give me strength!!)
Yeah right - I mean look at all the evidence you provided to back up your baseless, throw away comment.