Quote from marketsurfer:
you need to specify "long or short"-- therefore the broker insists you tell him your direction prior to entering.. The TA folks are so blinded by hindsight and looking at charts, they think its real time. surf
Quote from Ghost of Cutten:
It depends entirely how you define 'prediction'. If you define prediction as an expectation about how the future is likely to turn out (e.g. 'I am buying because I expect the market is more likely to rise a lot than fall') then trend-following, and indeed all profit-seeking market behaviour, depends on prediction. If you define a prediction as 'this will DEFINITELY happen in the future' then it isn't based on prediction..
Quote from euclid:
If I want to profit from a price movement, my broker insists that I state both the direction and position size before the move happens. In English, this is the very definition of prediction: A statement before the fact.
What makes it a prediction is not why you make it or whether you think it will prove correct, but simply the time that you make it. So I don't get what you guys mean when you say a trade isn't a prediction. That just doesn't make sense.
Quote from eurusdzn:
Surf,
Honest question. You are a journalist and trader. Youve been around 20+ years.
Do you know of Peter Brandt? Charts as "trading tools" and trend following seem to be exactly his thing and relevant to this specific thread and TA in general.
Thanks.
Quote from themickey:
Of course that's what your broker wants you to do, 'To Predict' because it is a failed trading strategy and he's more than likely fading your move.
All you guys who insist trading is prediction obviously know no other way to trade. You believe trading is all about prediction and are oblivious to another method. Surf for example is a typical 'Prediction Trader'. Therefore you guys want to tar all traders with the same brush. Ah ah no no, I don't give a rats ass which way the market moves, I don't sit on the edge of my seat hoping my trade will work out because of a hunch I have market is going up or down or sideways. Market can turn to hell in a handbasket, I don't care, I'm just coat-tailing AND THAT IS NOT PREDICTION.