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You must not sleep very well, then.

Saying that something is more likely to go up than down because it's in an uptrend is circular logic and useless as a method of prediction. I happen to agree with your calls on oil and the dollar. The S&P is more difficult, because profits can go down in real terms while they try to keep the...

Three topics of trend to consider: 1. The tendency of price up until now 2. The tendency of price from now forward 3. The relationship between 1 and 2, if any So far, the trend followers have kept going back to the first, non-controversial, issue. Tough customers, however, want the...

They both depend on luck rather than cause and effect.

No rational trader would rely on a method in which success is an outlier.

Every time I'm presented with an off-the-shelf system, I remember that old standby market efficiency. In this case: If a method like the one you describe ever became public, it would immediately become useless, because there's no way for the individual trader to reliably compete against the...

Likewise. Especially, thanks for that example about flipping a coin for 10 heads in a row being a "heads trend." It helped my own approach. There have been several worthwhile posts on either side of this topic. Sorting out issues is an excellent use of this thing we call the internet.

My definition was: Trend is the rate of change of price with respect to time. It's possible that this concept is not officially defined in the trading world.

What would be an instance of "trend," as you have defined it, where price action within a certain timeframe implies a causal tendency that can be extrapolated to indicate future price?

Okay, what is your definition of "trend" according to which price action within one timeframe implies a causal tendency that can be extrapolated to indicate future price?

That's cute. You take an excerpt of my post and call that portion a non sequitur.

Trend, taken as a slope as in "trend line," is the average rate of change of price with respect to time. A question like, "Do trends exist?" is an oversimplification. The real issue is whether or not future price can be determined on the basis of past price action. Just because price has...

The reason trendies run into trouble is that they look at price as dependent only on time.

The problem for the TA we're discussing is that price is all that's available.

My bad if I missed your charts. That doesn't get present company off the hook, though. Besides, this is about future "trends." Charts of the past don't count for that.

In that case, I'll settle for a few reasonably approximate projective charts.

Now, show us the chart of a trend that hasn't happened yet. You can draw it yourself, if necessary.

There are two variables here: price and time. A formula like y = mx + b simply describes the graph, using x and y axes, of a straight line in terms of the y (e.g. price) for each x (e.g. time). The constant m is the slope (or "trend") of this line. The expression "dy/dx" refers to the...

How can you talk about money when there's a principle at stake? Though I got the sense that Spike does make money, after all that.

Prediction alone is not the point here. It's the means of prediction, i.e. based solely on past price, that is the issue.