Quote from marketsurfer:
Understand, if the quants could see them, the patterns would quickly vanish as they would be arbed out of existence---
surf
Are you serious about seeing the patterns? Can you see them after the fact on a chart?
If you don't think there are patterns then I guess this next part won't make much of a difference to you, but how do you know that the "quants" aren't the ones that influence the direction of a security at those potential PA/TA hot spots? Support/resistance, doubletops/bottoms, triangles, flags, trendline touches, etc.....
When you think about it, the quants want people to believe in patterns and its to there advantage to keep the patterns going. If when a potential double top starts to form and some of the traders that are long decide to take profits and countertrend traders decide to get short and other traders on the sideline are just about ready to pick a side, seems like a lot of potential to make money, for quants big boys, institutions, etc....
What if the market is so big and with so many different players on different time frames and different investing objectives that no one group can for any amount of time control a liquid security. So when price reaches a potential support area instead of price holding it keeps dropping, maybe that time the quants were in control.
Maybe the patterns can't be arbed out of existence or because they are the perfect place to make money they aren't going to kill the goose.
What if the PA/TA trader is the pilot fish (PF) to the shark, the PF doesn't tell the shark where to go, it just follows them around and eats the scraps.