This is you being stupid/disingenuous again. The observation "there has been a large amount of recent enthusiastic buying" is not "technical analysis".

The observation "there has been a large amount of recent buying forming a discernible pattern from which I can predict future odds with zero recourse to fundamental information and make a profit from this that beats retail fees and spread" is what technical analysis is.

They are not the same thing. And in fact this shows your cowardliness and lack of evidence or insight that you take such an easy route. You're using something that is valid (judging relative interest in a stock by looking at price and volume or order book) as an umbrella term to lazily cover the validity of your more specific claims (that specific chart patterns without other information can predict probabilities of future movement in a way that is profitable and repeatable), combining them under an umbrella to claim TA is "valid". It's a fallacy of equivocation.

I've posted many successful short term trades here over the years. I'm well over 80% for successful short term trades. You have posted zero. When challenged to do so, you claim lack of interest. You spend all this energy defending your religion and then fail to man up to post specific, real time entries and exits so people can judge for themselves whether you're full of crap or not.

Was there a question in there? I have posted openly, honestly and respectfully in this forum since its inception. I have answered many questions both in the forum and pms. Like I have stated many times I trade very short term off of price actions relating to support/resistance, trends, momentum and volume. If you have a question about any of that I'll try to answer it.

Right. So you spend vast amounts of energy defending TA but refuse to post real time trades so that people can decide for themselves whether you're a loser/liar/blowhard or someone who can do consistently good trades. That says everything that everyone needs to know about your honesty and openness.

Here's a question for you: what evidence do you have that you can beat the market trading US equities using pure technical analysis? From my understanding you were a floor commodity trader for a long time with access to fees and spread and information not available to retail. Do you claim market-beating success trading US equities using technical analysis over a decent sample?

Yes for equity futures. I have been trading the EMD (midcap futures) a lot this year. They are thin and volatile but set up extremely well technically. It is also a fairly large contract compared to things like ES (SP), YM (dow) and ENQ (Nasdaq). I will admit my approach doesn't work very well on the more liquid stuff like ES (S&P 500) but I always tailor my approach to fit the market I am trading. If I had to trade ES I could figure out a way to do it though. I have little doubt my methods would work well in some of the more volatile and fast moving equities but I have never really bothered with them since I am more comfortable with futures.

As I have always said whatever you do in trading it has to fit your personal style and personality. You have to make your approach your own and something you can live with.

I have made trades in the past, equities included, on technical signals alone and I have done reasonably well for myself. I have done this via totally automated HFT systems, completely discretionary 3-6 months time frame, and everything in between. (To be fair, I can't remember using TA alone for anything over a few weeks on equity or equity futures although I've done so on commodities futures.)

I did end up finding out why some of those signals worked. Some examples: BoJ was intervening in Yen. There was an IRC pump&dump group working in specific patterns. Some idiot at another firm had a bad algorithm.

TS, judging by your posts you undoubtedly engage in some TA yourself whether you realize it or not.

That's funny, because all TA is by definition about looking at price and volume. There is nothing else.

Price and volume patterns reflect market psychology, and fear and greed haven't changed since rice traders started naming candlestick patterns centuries ago.

I am a somewhat shy semi sociopath except when it comes to disabled people and animals. So which moving average would work best for me?

All astrology is by definition about looking at relative star positions. There is nothing else.

This cowardly disingenuousness that you and mrbaseball share indicates pretty well that you have nothing.

Actual definitions of technical analysis:
Looking at price and volume to infer market attitudes isn't technical analysis. If you note that "Apple was $190 a few weeks ago and has seen strong buying to $220", that isn't technical analysis.

For something to cross into technical analysis, you need to believe that repeatable patterns observed in past price movements have forward predictive ability at a level sufficient to overcome retail fees and spread.

The real stupidity of technical analysis, and why it's a cancer for the retail trader, comes out of a few things:

- The edge must necessarily be tiny or big trading houses, machine learning and HFT would be making hundreds of billions of dollars leveraging large sums of capital, since technical analysis is full-information algorithmic (as you say, all of it just price and volume), and machines crush the human mind at analyzing purely mathematical full information games. If you're some retail clown making a non-trivial sum leveraging say $50K in capital, why aren't armies of physics PhDs (far far smarter than you with superior tools and computing clusters) paid $500K + bonuses chasing the same sum on billions in capital, and reducing your edge to one where there are no longer large returns?

- It encourages overtrading, which is the real scourge of the retail trader given the fees and spread they pay. Large data sets from brokers strongly show that amount of trading is very strongly correlated with increasingly negative return.

- There ARE large edges in the market using qualitative assessment of news and the probability of future occurrences, far larger than technical analysis could ever give you. Technical analysis fills your head up with a huge amount of crap and stops you from doing the hard work of finding real alpha.

- Technical analysis encourages confirmation bias and irrational thinking and data snooping, and makes you a poorer thinker.

... part of the answer is smart PhDs that go into trading are lazy. I had one guy who'd literally stop showing up once he made what was his share of the group average.

He was almost never there by Thursday. He was usually done by Tuesday afternoon.

LOL. Amazing.

Math degree is great, congrats. Doesn't matter for trading. Some great traders didn't graduate high school.

You can google and find plenty of traders who have made huge money trading technicals. Martin Zweig is one. But I don't think you really wanted an answer, you just wanted to troll and berate everyone.

Again, Tooth couldn't make any money using TA. Therefore it doesn't work and anyone claiming they make money using it is a liar, scam, fraud, etc. My point still stands.

It matters for technical analysis. That's why Wall Street hires physics and math PhDs to do their technical analysis and not whatever clown degree you have. Or even finance degrees.

No, I just want to call out worthless dickhead. Take your claim above. In 30 seconds, it's demolished:
Nice work, assclown.

No. I reject TA for the following reasons:

- The list of reasons mentioned above

- The fact that its participants are very, very stupid people. I gave an example of how you could strongly boost TA signals by just correcting for market inflections which drive most stock inflections (which create copious false support/resistance signals) - yet no one does even this basic noise correction. When a method fails to use even the most basic noise correction, its participants are assclowns.

- The extensive literature that shows the upper bound on the information/edge given by support and resistance is tiny, probably below retail fees and spread, in direct contrast to what idiots like you believe. Support and resistance is the cornerstone of TA and is relied upon for major decisions in TA systems to a high degree, yet it has a minuscule edge at best.

- The fact that TA patterns are created as prominently and frequently in graphs of RANDOM WALKS as they appear in real stock charts.

- The fact that people are easily fooled by noise and swear to seeing patterns in it.

It's an idiot's paradise. It's a waste of time for anyone wanting to generate real alpha.

You have sex with young animals too?

That's nothing compared to what I do to men.

No, math degrees do not matter for technical analysis. You do not need a degree to be able to read a chart. You are mistaking building trading algorithms with TA.


Again, my point still stands. Zweig used technicals. He is one of many famous traders who used them. Paul Tudor Jones does as well.

You are free to believe what you want. You know you are right. That's fine. I'd be surprised if you actually trade (based on your lack of taking any trades in the year long prop bet which we are in month 9) and if you do, I'd be very surprised if you outperform the market based on your lack of knowledge of simple trading truths.

Keep bashing TA and i'll keep outperforming using it.

Also, your posts belong in reddit/r/iamverysmart. You are the poster child for that forum.

So a retail trader can read these charts without any special skills or insights or intelligence and there is huge money available doing this? Do you buy Herbalife too, bro, in the belief they have great vitamins?

His bio line literally says that his wealth was made with fundamental valuations and adds some "market timing". If this is your best example, big fail dude. Some great traders with wonderful returns have also famously used astrology. Do you believe that astrology gives an edge?

Unless they are pure TA, the claims that TA is the source of their success is worthless.

I'll do your work for you since you fail at even giving basic example. Peter Brandt is an oft-cited example of a successful purely technical trader. He claims "accountant audited" 41% annualized for 18 years.

So what the **** is he doing selling $400 training packages?





I'm trying to engage on substantive points. You're coming back with zero evidence or argument. I would love anything that gives more of an edge. The trouble is, every technical analyst I engage with is an assclown. It's a bit like the Tesla thread.

Dude I've posted several recommended real time trades in the last few weeks alone all of which have crushed...90% to 400%, of which plenty of people have followed. Not only do I trade short term, my short term trades are pretty great. And I think technical analysis is a clown show. The real alpha is is in understanding what market participants think and how they will react to news and how news will propagate over time.

You're a fraud bro. You have posted zero real time trades vs my many many dozens over the years, but you come in here claiming you "outperform" the market.

I'm not the one claiming with zero evidence or rational argument that a method works.

It's you who came in believing something, attack everyone who disagrees, provide zero evidence or reasoning and fail to engage on any substantive points, then claim you "outperform" (while posting zero real time trades) and that people who disagree with your tea leaf reading hate it because they can't do. The examples you do give totally fail to make your point.

You're what you claim I am. Your lack of self awareness is comical, bro. Post some real time trades and let's see what you can do.

Does testing for the relationship between price changes in different sectors / based on changes in commodity prices fall under TA in your mind?

I think some of the argument here is perhaps because people have different ideas of what is or isn't TA.

As far as I'm aware a broad definition would include anything using just price/volume data - which would inevitably encompass some quantitative trading.

So I guess on one end of the spectrum you could have say the large trend following systematic funds/CTAs - they're essentially taking positions in dozens of different futures contracts across various asset classes simultaneously and are hoping to gain a small edge overall by taking advantage of the observation that trends tend to persist a bit. Though they tend to employ plenty of PhD researchers in pursuing this task and it is perhaps a bit of a different world to the "TA" that a retail punter is used to.

On the other end of the spectrum you have the subjective stuff - the dubious books, the seminars and coaching etc.. where some self appointed guru will teach you his amazing technique for subjectively drawing magical lines on a chart in order to engage in a bit of advanced tea leaf reading. It often can't be objectively tested and is generally complete bunk.

We're talking about the second obviously, but when challenged, TA proponents fall back to the first (any time you even glance at a price chart, you're doing TA!).

Good quants with near zero fees and spread can capture small correlation edges leveraging large amounts of capital or a type of front running (see:HFTs) for a decent yearly return unavailable to retail.

The TA that's dumb to me is stuff like support and resistance and short to medium term momentum, the staples of nearly everyone in retail who does TA. If edges exist in them the upper bound is tiny, yet they are treated as if they have meaning or explanatory or predictive abilities orders of magnitude higher than that which they do. It's pure mind-rot and as soon as someone says they do TA I know they'll never get rich from trading.

I am 100% sure there are people that do TA and are richer than you.

And most likely in this very thread, there is a few.

10 month would be right up your alley

are*

I know a guy who made 45k last week using TA only. Seen his trading account---100% legit.

I saw a guy a few years ago pull down $70K at roulette in 20 minutes, using chip-kissing only as his strategy. Seen it happen in real time---100% legit.

There you go assuming your conclusion again. You can't be that bright if you just continue to employ, and more forcefully, the same arguing strategy over and over again and actually believe it's working.

I'm not gonna argue with you over the efficacy of TA but I do know some of the best traders in the world spend a nonzero % of their time on it. I'll take their word over some blowhard internet know-it-all.

Your black and white claims here, like everywhere else, only persuade the most credulous.

Irredeemable moron,
I'm not "assuming" anything, let alone in the passage where I post solely to point out how dumb and pointless your post was.

Let me help you out with the sequence of events. Your Aspie mind needs it broken down, clearly.

You make dumb irrelevant claim that has zero relevance to the thread and no relation to showing anything about TA even if 100% true:

I point out the stupidity/utter pointlessness of your comment with an (also true) similar story. I do a straightforward and uncontroversial reductio ad absurdum using a logically identical story to point out the stupidity of your post:
You go off on a rant because your reading comprehension is too Aspie-level and your familiarity with even the simplest logical constructs too obtuse to even recognize a fully valid reductio ad absurdum, following up with a clown-rant that does NOTHING but show you are so ill-educated you can't even spot a perfectly executed element of basic logic:
You are the single dumbest person I've ever talked to in BFI. That includes penny stock believers. Congratulations.

To your new claims, which basically amounts to you admitting you don't know **** and have no arguments to bring, only this is worth responding to:
Some of the best traders and investors in the world have spent a nonzero amount of their time on financial astrology. Using your implied reasoning you just presented, astrology is a profitable strategy according to DoOrDoNot's logic.

(the following is over your head (despite being very simple) and is written for the people who aren't Aspie-level dumb

By they way, these traders and investors have spent time and money on something (astrology) which obviously total bull**** to any rational person with a microsecond of thought and has no plausible causative mechanism for affecting stocks.

Given this, how widespread do you think the practice of a numerology technique would be for something that's not obviously total bull**** like astrology but instead is superficially plausible and easily confirmation biased and capable of being split into thousands of different strategies and rationalizations, but totally false? Even very successful investors would try to use it and "believe" in it. In other words, the world would look exactly like it does now even if TA had zero edge. So your claims that this or that person do it successfully aren't terribly interesting unless they do ONLY that. And the foremost example mentioned of someone who uses only TA does it on commodities (not US equities, and commodities does have some weak tradable TA signals), and is selling $400 training packages to chumps despite supposedly making 40% annualized for 18 years....

So yeah, right now I win this thread and it's not close. Which is hilarious given how easy it is to prove that TA has a meaningful edge if it does indeed have one.