Indeed, but you said MOST. Or in other words: you have to dinstinct yourself from the others. The survey gave the average result. The real good traders are above average. The average is the summation of all persons, from very louzy to extra ordinary, divided by the population. Like in any discipline only those who can perform better than the average will be able to succeed. Otherwise people like George Soros, Michael Dell, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Tiger Woods........ wouldn't never have been so succesful. Even if you are far away below average you can have some succes. Look at George Bush.
Politically and diplomatically speaking, your back-testing statement might be 80% to 90% correct for now.
I take this one. practitioners of advanced TA are not posting their methods so unless you are involved in top class organization, you will never know more then generic and vague description. On this site practitioners of advanced," modern" TA are Pabst, Man, Spike, myself and few lurkers. Chances of "modern" TA methods to be made public are the same as you and professor being roommates.
How would you know 'On this site practitioners of advanced, "modern" TA are Pabst, Man, Spike, myself and few lurkers.', if practitioners of advanced TA are not posting their methods?
Some intresting replies guess people have time to think weekends To make any sense of the question It would help to define what "TA" is and what does "works" mean. Is quantative analysis a sub set of TA for example? Surfer mentions order flow, is the analysis of orders and order book TA? Is a plain price chart TA, it is only a sampled representation of historical price after all. "Works" is even trickier, (certainley in the absence of a defintion of TA) are we talking about using it (TA) completely mechanicaly, or as some sort of decision support tool? An aside you can use a hammer to bang in a nail does it work for that purpose? Some who have posted here would concider consistantly extracting a handful of ticks a day "working" (most probably) others would require more. Are we even talking about TA as a tool to trade or as a tool for the forcasters and other talking heads? Heres a thought draw a random line through a chart and trade from it. It can be done profitably - just monitor price action around it. (is "price action" "TA"). Use some simple rules like buy above and moving away etc. Is a random line TA? Kind of a semi-troll post imho, despite that some very intresting replies. Often the case. I would like to know what the OP conciders "TA" and works for what exactly? Guess I should offer up a stab at a definition. How about :- TA is the analysis of current and past price and volume of an instrument or instruments. I guess that puts all the meat into the "works" side of the equation. For me I use TA to know where I am now, where price is compared to where it has been before. From that point of view it clearly works. Can this be used to make a trade, yes. Can it be used to forcast the future, no. Can it help at anticipating a couple of possible future senarios and then monitoring which is playing out, yes. Cheers, Nick.
[1913 Webster] To foresee; to calculate beforehand, so as to provide for; as, to forecast the weather; to forecast prices. If you mean "forecast with absolute certainty" then I'd agree but if you mean "forecast with a probability of being correct" (as a weather forecaster would seek) then I disagree. A simple example of technical (vs fundamental) analysis: "daily price crosses a 20 ema and the ema turns in its direction, can you forecast the probability of a continuation in that direction given a retracement to within X% of the ema." I would suggest that the probability is different for different instruments but that a probability can be measured and form the basis for a useful trade.