Reply to Matt but a general comment for the discussion.I agree...

Reply to Matt but a general comment for the discussion.
I agree sentiment logically precedes price, really we should analyse Sentiment alongside Technicals and Fundamentals, an SA/TA/FA ternary. However there's no template for that so we rely on hearsay and 'feeling', things that are the most simple to manipulate and astroturf....

Personally in my TA practice i've moved away from complex price oscillators and moving average systems after studying Wyckoff. Now I concentrate on "money flow" indicators which digest volume x relative price movements. OBV has become a favorite because as it is not averaged it displays immediate data, and the arithmetic behind it is simple so you can "see" it. One of the first lessons in TA is that indicators/oscillators are delayed in the sense of being historical summaries and don't have magical powers to determine the future, except in the dimension of Sentiment because everyone uses them. They can produce false signals and also be abused by pump-dumpers.

Take this example, MLL/FFX in 2019. Fell over 60% in the linear regression. On the way down there were three pumps that could have appeared as recoveries. I know this intimately as I bought the first one in Feb, lol, thinking the bottom was in at 14c. Each time the MACD system crossed the signal line and passed into positive. In retrospect it's easy to see the lower highs and downside bias but in the moment when you're waiting for a bottom price movement alone may not help. In a rising market MACD is far more user friendly, which itself is a lesson about timing - don't invest obsessively all the time.



Wyckoff told us the "composite men" (professional investors) are usually behind major price movements and have set important levels in advance (of course they have). These days I analyse volume to try to find out what those levels are. On Balance Volume is crude but does sort of summarise money flow. Wyckoff + OBV have since proven to be very powerful tools for me, particularly in identifying support levels for buying smart, and the "strength" of swings.

The same period with that lens shows a declining/diverging OBV and sellers in control of large volume days, correcting the appearance of bottoms and break outs, which were actually low volume pumps followed by larger volume dumps.



Just my experience, this stuff is always up for debate and discussion.