Trend lines and Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

[farmerjohn1324]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that the more precisely you measure somethings location, the less precisely you can measure it's velocity/momentum, etc.

Similarly, the more you zoom in on a chart, the less meaningful the trend lines are. On a tick chart, they're all but meaningless. You could "see" a clear trend on a 5-minute chart, only to zoom out to a week and see it as meaningless.

Now if you zoom out on a macro- scale, you can clearly see that the planet Saturn is moving at a certain speed and will continue to do so unless an outside force is applied (FA).

Thoughts?

 

[padutrader]

You could "see" a clear trend on a 5-minute chart, only to zoom out to a week and see it as meaningless.

you are right
that is why you have to be clear in what time frame you are.

a trend on a 5 min, is a trend, only on that time frame.....the same trend may be pullback on the 4 hourly and be noise on a daily time frame....noise means something meaningless.

the movement of Saturn only has meaning in our planetary system.in the galaxy or the entire milky way it is meaning less.forgive my knowledge about astronomy or rather the lack of it.

 

[Saltynuts]

I have NO DOUBT a principle of quantum mechanics, the basic laws of the universe at the smallest scales, much smaller than an atom, just being its natural principle, applies to the trading decisions of human beings with millions, billions or even more atoms trying to make a buck.

 

[padutrader]

I have NO DOUBT a principle of quantum mechanics, the basic laws of the universe at the smallest scales, much smaller than an atom, just being its natural principle, applies to the trading decisions of human beings with millions, billions or even more atoms trying to make a buck.

yes there is no doubt.
but there is the problem of managing this.
'if you cannot measure it you cannot manage it '-Seykota

 

[ironchef]

Don't think you need to know Quantum Mechanics to trade but you do need classical mechanics: Brownian motion.

 

[schizo]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that the more precisely you measure somethings location, the less precisely you can measure it's velocity/momentum, etc.

Similarly, the more you zoom in on a chart, the less meaningful the trend lines are. On a tick chart, they're all but meaningless. You could "see" a clear trend on a 5-minute chart, only to zoom out to a week and see it as meaningless.

Now if you zoom out on a macro- scale, you can clearly see that the planet Saturn is moving at a certain speed and will continue to do so unless an outside force is applied (FA).

Thoughts?

To debunk TA, now you want to stack day trading against some quirky laws of quantum physics? You must be bored out of your mind, seriously.

 

[tomorton]

TA has meaning within its context. So statistically a certain TA formation on a 5-minute chart might have validity for the next 20 x 5-minute bars. The same formation on a daily chart might have validity for the next 20 x daily bars.

The problems traders sometimes get into is where they extrapolate the formation's validity from one time-frame to a much longer one.

 

[Wheezooo]

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says that the more precisely you measure somethings location, the less precisely you can measure it's velocity/momentum, etc.

Similarly, the more you zoom in on a chart, the less meaningful the trend lines are. On a tick chart, they're all but meaningless. You could "see" a clear trend on a 5-minute chart, only to zoom out to a week and see it as meaningless.

Now if you zoom out on a macro- scale, you can clearly see that the planet Saturn is moving at a certain speed and will continue to do so unless an outside force is applied (FA).

Thoughts?

I was going to say exactly what Tom just said, but he expressed it more efficiently.

It's as though you have this perspective that what has happened must dictate what will happen, and that new opposing forces are not allowed into the marketplace. In financial mathematics, the ultimate reality is - time increases uncertainty.

Maybe you want to think more along the lines of... I see a clear trend... now that trend breaks... price is trying to tell me something changed.

 

[farmerjohn1324]

I see a clear trend.

I'm stuck on wondering if any of these trends are actually real in the first place. And if any positive results would just be false positives.

 

[Wheezooo]

I'm stuck on wondering if any of these trends are actually real in the first place. And if any positive results would just be false positives.

Some are and some aren't. I won't deny that a random number generator creates patterns that resemble what you see in the market, or for that matter, that many times the action seen in the marketplace is random. But just because A resembles B doesn't necessarily mean B must be A. This is why if something is not doing what I think it should, I don't putz around with it, I get out without hesitation. Either I was fooled by randomness or as I said previously the equilibrium changed. Either one, I know I am WRONG. I want out!

I would be considerably more doubtful of the viability of TA, but I have on too many occasions been responsible for creating support and resistance levels. It becomes very difficult to look on a chart and see that for the past three hours a support line has developed at price X, and accept it as random when I am the one bidding X, getting filled in pieces, watching it move away from me, back down into me, getting filled on a few more pieces, bouncing away from me... but it ain't going lower til I'm done... and in some thinner markets, that can take days - if not weeks.

...but I admire your skepticism. That's good.