Quote from billgates:
Now we know who is who.
Those that answered "It's true" are traders.
Those that answered "not true" are snake oil sellers.
And looks like the latter prevail on ET boards.
That's one opinion. I could just as easily state the reverse. Without any proof to back it up, it's irrelevant.
As jbt pointed out, Bollinger Bands are EXTREMELY well known and still work if you know how to use them. In fact, ALL technical analysis was originally taught by someone, sometime -- to thousands or millions of people. Many stayed with the original usage, many others tried to tweak their indicators to improve performance. Most are not vain enough to think that they've invented something unique. Every "tweak" I've ever seen has been done before, and I have no doubt that 99.9% of all secret "proprietary systems" are BS that some 18-year old kid in his bedroom independently arrived at as well. But we'll never know, since everybody thinks their magical system is so good it should never be revealed lest it self-destruct upon exposure to sunlight. Maybe we've ALL got the same secret system. Who knows?
You wanna talk snake oil? I've seen "proprietary systems" going for $25,000 that turned out later to be nothing but a few standard indicators, mildly tweaked to kick ass in backtesting. The snake oilers are the people who claim they've found the Holy Grail and that despite its universal and eternal greatness, will fall apart like a '76 Lada in a Hurricane if others ever used it. Their secrecy, and their weak explanations for why it must remain secret, are just tools to justify the insanely high prices they demand. Have you seen the TurtleTraders' system? Nothing I didn't know already on my own. Nothing. But I didn't have to pay thousands or sign an NDA to learn to "Follow The Trend(TM)."
Every chart I see posted here (or on other trading sites) either has a moving average, or MACD, or stochastics, or candlesticks on it. Every one has some standard TA attached. The theory in this thread seems to be that standard TA can't work if other people are using the same thing, which is obviously wrong. Are you going to tell NihabaAshi that he's about to go down in flames because somehow the secret of "candlesticks" has been leaked to the nefariously cunning Japanese? I currently trade quite successfully using standard stochastics, a moving average crossover, and some secret proprietary money management I call "Stop Losses". If you want to buy my winning system, PM me. Have your VISA card and some lubricant handy. If anybody thinks I "invented" my system and that NOBODY in the known world is using stochastics and an MA crossover, they're insane. I would bet that more people trade using the same system I do than any other. And I am net profitable.
There is essentially no difference between saying "TA doesn't work if others know about it" and "a system using TA doesn't work if others know about it", unless the system is so fragile and overoptimized as to be worthless anyway. See my previous posts.