Quote from scalper21:
Can you be a system trader and not use technical analysis at all?
Well... I guess that depends on your definition of technical analysis. TA typically takes variables such as price, volume, bid/ask size, and myriad others and then processes them in some way or another, according to some formula or another. Now, let's say your system is as follows
'Buy MSFT if you wake up in the morning and your cat is sitting on your bed, sell MSFT is your cat is in the living room'
That's a system, but is it TA?
The word system as it's used around here
generally refers to a method of trading that incorporates fixed buy and sell rules which are automatically generated.
I can't say whether or not there are systems out there looking at variables that are so far removed from either the actual activities of the markets or market - related financial indices like interest rates that they would be thought of as
not using 'technical analysis'. To me, it's all technical analysis, even if you're correlating seasonal temperatures in North Africa with coffee prices or the number of words in Bernanke's speech with interest rate activity 90 days from now.