Member Info for mumerologist

I had my first encounter with Grays over his 16p prediction. It was definately not hypothetical, I was attacking it and he was defending it, and still defending in the face the rally that was taking place while the exchanges took place. He even refused to revise it when I pointed out that the logic of his original prediction would mean that it had to be revised, down to zero eventually. I have written elsewhere about Grays historical revisionism, now thats what he's really good at.

I was not commenting on the validity of the article and many more that I could have posted but on the fact that Grays asserted that noboby who has seriously studied TA would not think that it was amazing.

"Anyway, all i can say is that anyone who decides to take the time to research will be amazed. I have yet to meet 1 person who has seriously looked into it that hasn't"

You should get out more, or failing that read a few books. There is a wealth of academic and business literature that has analysed TA in depth over long timescales, in many markets and for many shares and indices. Shame you never read of any of it. I even posted some when we first exchanged views but you obviously never read it. So just to keep you in the loop:

A recent study by finance professors at Massey University in New Zealand examined 49 developed and emerging markets to see if TA added value. They looked at more than 5,000 technical trading rules across four rule families :

1.Filter Rules - These rules involve opening long (short) positions after price increases (decreases) by x% and closing these positions when price decreases (increases) by x% from a subsequent high (low).

2.Moving Average Rules - These rules generate buy (sell) signals when the price or a short moving average moves above (below) a long moving average.

3.Channel Break-outs - These rules involve opening long (short) positions when the closing price moves above (below) a channel. A channel (sometimes referred to as a trading range) can be said to occur when the high over the previous n days is within x percent of the low over the previous n days, not including the current price.

4.Support and Resistance Rules - These “Trading Range Break” rules involve opening a long (short) position when the closing price breaches the maximum (minimum) price over the previous n periods.

The result? Using statistical methods to adjust for data snooping bias, the authors found:

"no evidence that the profits to the technical trading rules we consider are greater than those that might be expected due to random data variation

If you want to read it:

Technical Analysis Around the World

Ben R. Marshall

Massey University - Department of Economics and Finance

Rochester H. Cahan

Macquarie Capital (USA)

Jared Cahan

Macquarie Bank Ltd

August 1, 2010

Some people seem to be better than others at sticking their pin though. As Bursar of King's in the inter-war years, Keynes substantially improved the financial position of the College. He also became very wealthy himself, and famous as a patron of the arts and sciences, buying Impressionist paintings and scientific manuscripts. He put all this down to having a very good system for where to stick his pins rather than telling others where to stick theirs. He was more forthcoming in relation to economics where he took great pride in telling others where to stick their pins.

Interesting. On current movements I am looking for a new rally to start end this week, early next. The current sideways movement is I think a sign of strength not inertia. The dynamics certainly indicate that something is afoot.