Musashi,the great thing about technical analysis is.. that the...

Musashi,

the great thing about technical analysis is.. that the more who study/use the techniques, the more favourable they will be for those who can get it right.

Let me explain.

Back in the 1980's say 10000 traders were all studying technical analysis and picked 5-6 of the most successful techniques and combined their knowledge to write a book.

lets say that since then, 500000 active traders worldwide have read that book which contains the methodology to determine when a stock is going up or down by using one of these techniques.

Thats 500000 people who _could_ at any one time, see a stock pattern and read into it the exact same way as eachother and thus is becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.. because 500000 more people have bought or sold that share based on the information given to them by the book.

Now real world is obviously more complex and people have different interpretations but you can easily see how reading a published book on technicals and doing short-stops on profit (yes I said short-stops on PROFIT i.e. not being greedy) could prove to be the most successful trading plan of all... until someone writes a book on that..