Nonsense. Almost everything I've read about PA is subjective. Candlesticks: subjective. Classical patterns: subjective. "Cup and saucer"? Seriously? This stuff is tea-leaf reading and highly subjective. Almost any part of TA that can't be quantified is in all likelihood subjective.
Does Technical Trading Really Work?
- Thread starter Lloyd W. Coutee
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The original specifications for those patterns is precise or they aren't TA. Just because someone is unable to convert the measurements into a tangible alert doesn't mean everyone else can't. Cup and Saucer are separate patterns with unique 'quantifiable' differences. Tho it might be tedious and especially tedious whenever there's little motivation to do so those patterns can be reduced to code and likely can already be found in the public domain. They by their nature are very precise and objective in their features or they can be excluded from the category of TA.
I understand it can be difficult to discern some of those patterns but at the same time I know their individual definitions are quite clear. I accept multiple different candlestick books will have slightly different and even large differences in definitions but these are subjective errors due to the subjective skill levels and even subjective interest levels of those who are gathering the info into book form. The actual TA lessons that can be studied and then applied, is objective ... Regardless of whether one chooses to apply the right, wrong or the middle choice of 3 differing definitions ...each of those definitions must by the nature of TA be OBJECTIVE or it's not TA.
I understand it can be difficult to discern some of those patterns but at the same time I know their individual definitions are quite clear. I accept multiple different candlestick books will have slightly different and even large differences in definitions but these are subjective errors due to the subjective skill levels and even subjective interest levels of those who are gathering the info into book form. The actual TA lessons that can be studied and then applied, is objective ... Regardless of whether one chooses to apply the right, wrong or the middle choice of 3 differing definitions ...each of those definitions must by the nature of TA be OBJECTIVE or it's not TA.
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Although you can use candlesticks, classical patterns, and indicators as part of PA/TA, these are merely materials and tools, not actions.
You could take me to a piece of land with all the materials and tools necessary to build a house, but without the blueprints and education/hands-on experience in translating the blueprints, it's unlikely I'd be able to build a house of any decent quality.
The very act of quantifying subjective phrases like higher high, 1-2-3, wide range bar, strong trend, Ross hook, overbought, ample airspace, strong move down, rising EMA, and so on is one of most powerful trading education experiences I can think of.
It can be incredibly time-consuming, but it's an exercise that can turn an interesting trading idea into a razor-sharp scalpel for removing cash from the markets.
So by your definition, if it can't be coded, it's not really TA. Sorry, that makes you an outlier, it doesn't make you right.
Yes everything that's TA can be coded and if it can't then it's not TA.
Others such as myself could come up with a plan on the spur of the moment and build it from an image in my mind. Tho that wouldn't be v wise I could do it because I've built hundreds of houses from blueprints and have the critical details committed to memory including the reasons why they're important.
What do you think TA is besides a set of tools? If you want a "blueprint" (by which I presume you mean a trading plan), then go to the Strategy Design forum, not the Technical Analysis forum.
The point of TA is to transform financial time-series data into forms that indicate some specific action should be taken. This generally suggests the blueprint to use all by itself, going far beyond your house building analogy. But that doesn't change the fact that a great deal of TA is subjective and thus giving rise to multiple interpretations (aka multiple blueprints).
I appreciated your earlier post which is the 1st indication I've ever seen that implied you're holding back on disclosing your most valuable intellectual property because I feel you're way too loose with what you disclose but I also understand your enthusiasm and genuine desire to give back to the community which helped you when you were starting.
If others had your enthusiasm for working things out yourself they wouldn't need much more than to sit and work it out for themselves.
The only things that are left out of any one specific blueprint are the standards that are taken for granted. Every direction change on a floorplan is 90 or 45 degrees so it's not necessary to specify that but that same rule requires every direction change that's not standard must be specified.
Each blueprint is extremely objective. They can't be anything but objective. If it's not then it fails the definition of a blueprint. Corrections are made and sometimes redlined prints are submitted to the architect so the mistake isn't repeated. If you have 3 prints indicating something different then you have human error unrelated to the desired plan.