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Strategies & Market Trends : Position Trading Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tim Luke who wrote (505)	8/23/1998 12:39:00 PM
From: Jon Tara	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 7247

I think that Friday proves that nobody know nuthin'! Did anybody think mid-morning that the market would recover 200 points before the close? I think it's kinda funny all the predictions being discussed here of exactly when the bottom will be, and how far the market will go after it turns. It's like you people are looking into crystal balls. Hell, I'm happy when I can predict what the market is doing right now! :) And, honestly, that's all that I suspect anybody can really predict - what the current trend is. Once you know what the trend is, you can trade with the trend today. Tomorrow? Who knows. Fortunately, the trend tends to go one way for a long, long time, so if you can identify with the trend and trade with it, you will make money until one day - boom! I guess that's one way of knowing when it's changed. :) But I think it's foolish to think you can predict future turns with the kind of accuracy stated in a number of recent posts here. While I respect your opinions, I respectively submit that you are talking through your respective hats. :) P.S. I am not an anti-TA Luddite, BTW. I use TA havily, but I don't think it can be used to predict future events. It can be used to predict likely targets, should a stock or index approach the target. We can predict, say, where the S&P is likely to pause, IF it gets to a particular target. We can predict the distance of short-term moves. (e.g. on a flag breakout, we expect about the same move as the one just before the formation of the flag). We can use TA to identify the trend. Mainly, we can use TA to suggest probabilities of near-term price action. But use TA to say that the market is going to bottom in September? Phooey! Everybody knows that you use tea leaves for that. And prediciting fundamentals is even more dicey than predicting the market using TA. You think you can do this, and I'll wire Mr. Greenspan and let him know to prepare for his retirement.