Topic: Say NO to voodoo analysis! - page 2. (Read 3572 times)

But you see, there is evidence against any such thing.

You, however, have still not supplied anything at all except a bald assertion that some X is Y. You haven't even properly defined any of the terms you are using. And you expect rational discourse to follow?

Try demonstrating that there are no correlations with the variable time against the price graph. Most such analyses show that markets differ greatly from random walks, and are therefore predictable at least in theory. Then, you can try to show that even though markets may not be random walks, they exhibit other properties which prevent technical analysis from ever detecting these patterns and trends.

You will be fighting a losing battle, though, I am afraid.

the TA bashers all use ad hominem, lol.

Oh no, I guess I blew it. No more safe profits for us unbelievers.  

Thank you dude, each quack quacky "analysis" less makes a real difference! I was already worried this thread would be for naught.

Edit: Changed the direct ad-hominem 'cause of chessnut.

I admit that I've taken it a bit too far with that.

all analysis in BTC is voodoo actually

Im looking hard, really hard, but I cant find any facts here. lot of fallacies though.

gosh, really? what the hell does "equilibrium" have to do with it?

you think there are really hard and fast rules to any market?

seriously dude, forget this sine wave thing. it's rubbish seriously.

the closest thing to a market is a game of chess or poker. that's it. everything else, any rules or moving averages, indicators, or statistics, are incorrect.

how could you figure out the best move in chess by using statistics? clearly it would not work. the same goes for this sine wave thing. there are no logical rules to chess, just as there are no logicl rules to how a market works.

the way you win chess is to get inside the mind of the other player. that's why computers who are good at chess search through all the different possible moves and pick the best one. they dont perform any statistical analysis of previous gameplay, on the assumption that future gameplay will be like the past. the same is true of markets. to figure out how the market is going to move, you have to get inside the mind of the average trader.

any other strategy or technique is pure bullshit. we all know that indicators may occasionally work, but because they have no scientific merit they are not hard and fast and will fail.

there are multiple philisophical points that are brough up by this discussion, interestingly. but ultimately how your model works is more important than the output. if you base your model on incorrect assumptions, you are never going to get a satisfactory output. and that is where 99% of market predictions or indicators go wrong.

the only way to make money from indicators - or more broadly any form of technical analysis - is to sell them to other traders on false claims. john bollinger has done a pretty good job of that.

Oh look, another TA bashing thread.

If you're all going to act like closed-minded children about it I'll simply keep my TA-derived trading strategies (and profits) to myself.

This guy gets it ^^

You can't beat chicken entrails, IMHO

Well, if it didn't go backwards in time might be a good start

Why should my analysis wouldn't be as legitimate as anybody else  

Its a fallacy for two reasons to say that 'TA' is bogus because not everybody wins using it. Reason one, most people HAVE to lose, it's a zero sum game! Reason two, a lot of technical analysts are trolls and cant explain a single thing about what they are doing.

There are some very robust laws playing out in the market that have to be respected. Ask any economist who 'understands the fundamentals' ( ). He might tell you that forces of the market act to restore equilibrium. they do! a physics scientist will also tell you that this is exactly the model of a simple sine wave. In other words what goes up must come down. If the technical analyst uses leading indicators that effectively can measure momentum, acceleration and deceleration in price action, he has officially a legitimate mathematic and scientific edge in probability of choosing low and high prices to buy and sell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Pink_Unicorn

Those safely made billions are out there somewhere, trust me! You can't see them yet, but that's just because you lack faith. Trust in your technical redeemer and you too can be rich.

Have you any positive evidence for your positive claims? No? Then you are no better than the so-called charlatans.

Don't think anyone made a billion in this market yet. Not enough liquidity, no sufficiently established exchange yet.

A million or two on the other hand... I'm pretty sure some managed to do that by trading. How would you want them to prove it was due to a strategy though? Just posting a list of trades, even if profitable, could be still just a result of chance.

You know, I'd just like to actually see one of those guys who safely made billions with TA. Otherwise I will simply dismiss them into the same category as perpetuum mobiles (that's actually a nice comparison you came up with there, oda ).

But I guess they are probably all too busy living the elusive, seclusive rich people life after they safely conjured up all those billions.

My quote pertains to the historic performance of the indicator.

FIrst, this is taken out of context and 2nd saying that it has not been wrong so far is not the same as suggesting it will never be.

This is the Weekly McDonald's
Nowhere in 2014 has there been a buy signal
The closest we got was the cross up, back in June. But the low angle of the cross was a weak signal with low probabilities. Some "absolute" traders may have called that a strong buy because it "Absolutely" crossed up. Some that can discern the difference between a good signal and a bad signal made money (or at least protected their wealth) and didn't buy there.


The quality of the analysis comes down to how well they can read the market. Experience plays a gigantic role in this. Some have it and some don't.

Look, I'm not trying to convince you to convert to our side (I already did enough of that with others around here ) but I just want to show you that there were no real "TODAMOON" signals at all this year and most signals that were present said down.

There are people (on the Internet, writing about it, in fact) claiming to do physics and having invented perpetuum mobile devices.

An actual physicist pointing out that's just bunk science, and that their claims can safely be ignored is also just committing a 'No True Scotsman Fallacy', by your interpretation.

The low signal/noise ratio on a forum like this, and the large number of thoughtless practitioners of the more cargo cult-ian aspects of TA in here, are not sufficient reason to conclude that TA in principle doesn't work.

Ok, here are just 2 quick quotes as examples:


To me this reads like a variation of the No True Scotsman Fallacy:
"Scotsman Indicators give you false trade signals? Well, then of course he's not a TRUE Scotsman you must be using it wrong!"

In any case, even if you are right, most of the economic wizards I see on these boards are quite obviously unable to use their TA tools correctly as the vast majority of their never-ending predictions turn out to be constantly wrong.