Quote from jem:
maestro are flag patterns figments of our imagination.
If you say no then you know trendlines sometimes work because they frequently contain the flag.
If you say yes. You have not watched charts. I say go back and look at some charts. Try looking at the hourly s&P charts form last month or the monthly/weekly dow chart.
I commented on the flag -- here in elite trader months ago as it was forming and made predictions.
I have better idea. Why don't we discuss a corkscrew formation. It works the following way. Draw a flag formation and then attach to it its mirror image. If the price follows this mirror pattern then you are in a "clock wise corkscrew" formation. If the price breaks out of that mirror pattern then you are in a "counter clock corkscrew" formation. This simple pattern is very reliable and could be verified by drawing these patterns on any bar chart. There are two exceptions though: If the price is outside of one of the corkscrew formations then draw another one that is twice the size of your original flag. Let us call it a "Champaign" corkscrew formation. This new pattern will indicate a volatility break out and will signify a possible price reversal. Another exception I call a 'corkscrew with a handle". This formation can be observed in a slowly trending market where the price movement (ATR) is less then the size of a screw. Those patterns can be used to predict a possible fundamental disturbance in a company environment including the CEO resignation or an accounting fraud. Using those patterns is also more productive if you use a logarithmic scale on your chart in which case your trendlines( the ones you use to draw the flags) are more like spirals or whirlpools. Using the corkscrew formations though you can "unwind" those spirals quite easily. Overall its a wonderful and reliable tool to predict major events in stocks, commodities, futures, currencies, indexes, options (including exotics and binaries) as well as moments of unstable mental behavior of a company management.
I have just finished my fundamental work on these formations where I conclusively proved that FEDs recommendations are 98% correlated with the "corkscrew patterns" observed in DIA.
Cheers