Quote from rcanfiel:
Funny, that is the general opinion I have of the defenders of the TA faith. Sometimes apes at the zoo will throw feces at onlookers. That is about the quality of reply I have seen from the TA faithful. Insults, sneers, trying to pick away at academic studies, but in the end, almost everyone following TA basically loses money. People "know someone who is successful with TA" - anecdotal evidence of little value. Others claim they have found things "that work for me" - testimonial evidence is also of little value. Others that "why should I expect someone who found their own holy grail to reveal what they found for study?" - this is self-dismissing - statistics is not about taking people's word for it. And most people claiming things like this tend to lie. Or "well, you have to learn how to combine them." This is just garbage combined with garbage. If two things dont work, combining them is a stupid way to evade the subject Etc. Etc.
I have not seen one meaningful retort that lends strong and reliable credence to TA as an outperformance method in this entire thread. Why in the world the TA faithful find comfort in this thread is unclear.
As I said, I have overlap with Mark on the fact that classical TA is the main problem. That some people may have found some a magical twist will always be possible. But I suspect most of these believed twists on TA would vaporize under a serious double-blind study over the longterm and through various market conditions.
