USD/JPY - Dollar Yen Nov 03

Odd. It looks like a graph of random fluctuations with a variety of lines superimposed on top of it. Amusing. Come up with a system better than just hanging onto a diverse range of shares yet?

It's a bit of a car-crash, isn't it? At a glance, it looks like it's price plot, candlesticks, Bollinger bands, moving averages and trend lines all smashed together. (Did I miss anything?)

It's OK if you're used to reading all-in-one charts, but a bit hostile for non-experts, and a crap scale if you want intraday.

Jon

But do they work? I've read that tech analysis is useless, because you just can't predict the future.

As with all tools, it's the skills and experience of their users that make the difference. IMHO, it's a good servant, but a bad master.

Seems to me that the people who've been too strict about TA, who've applied it too rigidly, tend to be the ones that come the cropper in the end.

I do use some TA basics, looking for things like head'n'shoulders formations (watch out for the dandruff), funnel structures, and so forth, and those do seem to be reasonably reliable indicators, but I don't see the point in going deeper than that; every time I do, the indications get less and less reliable, the stronger the TA I apply.

And I've lost my copy of "The Master Swing Trader". *Grump.*

Jon