I don’t plan all my investing around it of course, but being able to quickly read a chart with oscillators like RSI, or spotting bearish patterns (head and shoulders, bear flag) can tell me that maybe I should wait a bit more before entering to see if it actually falls, or if it breaks out and establishes a more uptrend
TA = good to get an idea what’s going on in the market until now
The lesson is simple: you can’t predict future price based on price history.
I suspect the market has the quality of the particle-wave duality. A little Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in play.
Edit: (e.g. once you find a TA method that works exceptionally well, and the market learns of it, it’ll cease to work as well. Hence the teams of developers at all the firms and funds.)
It’s really fun! Much easier to find success when you’re not in a zero sum competition against a bunch of quants and don’t have your whole livelihood at stake. Highly recommend it for anyone who wants a “day trading simulator” experience.
Almost all technical analysis is just slicing and dicing a moving average. There is enough of them to try to keep people trading for some time before giving up.
A single price series just doesn't contain much memory.