Quote from: omarabid on March 08, 2013, 08:55:14 PM

So in order for a TA analyst (I won't judge the TA science per se, I'll keep it with the people) should make correct predictions most of the times (or at least, correct enough to break even).

So here is my suggestion: Every TA in Btctalk keep a note about his predictions in a text file (sure you'll post about it here, but I don't want to go through hundreds of posts) and then present them to the btctalk society to judge his TA skills.

The file format is quite simple

dd/mm/yyyy: (predicted price for the day) | (predicted future trend)

Who's in?

Doubtful.
Chartists are limited in two ways:
1) All the techniques that they learn, it is basic and known by millions of wannabies who learn the same MACD indicators. EVEN if it worked, there is no advantage to be profitable. And because everyone shares the same knowledge, the market reacts based on that preconception, and it works only because everyone agrees that it will happen, thus happens. This is known in psychology as self-fulfilling prophecy.

2) They are human. What I mean by this is that they can't process all the indicators in real time, they must simplify and most of them rely solely on graphical patterns, neither mathematics nor market analyses.
Those who rely on math, end up generating algorithms, which are obviously kept secret if it works, therefore they have an edge they can profit from. If everyone knew THE a successful strategy, the edge would be lost.
Charters (TA's) don't research the market for indicators, they apply tools that had existed for centuries. And because every average guy know what you know, you can't beat them unless they make a huge mistake. At the end, without solid math, it becomes a cheap martingale (the betting system, so popular among amateur gamblers).

The way I see it, Technical Analysis is to alchemy, what Algorithmic Trading is to chemical engineering.
In algos you go beyond what the drawn pattern, you gather waaaaaaaaay more data in search of patterns that may anticipate the market.

Quote from: bitcoinbitcoin113 on March 08, 2013, 09:03:05 PM

Quote from: nanopene on March 08, 2013, 08:52:50 PM

Seeing the lack of rebuttals, I think he just created this thread as a sandbox for us for all the bitching.
Genius move, haha

Quote from: Richy_T on March 08, 2013, 07:25:19 PM

Quote from: Ichthyo on March 08, 2013, 05:58:04 PM

moral sciences

Oxymoron. The guy who invented the term "Social science" should have had his arse kicked all the way down the road and back.

Social science is real science.
Experiments follows the scientific method, they ARE falsifiable, they are quantifiable, they can be empirical, and they are peer reviewed.
It also relies on observation, and there are a very eclectic range of subdisciplines.
Social Psychology and Behavioral Economics are my favorite because of their counterintuitive discoveries, and I exploit them effectively to push sales every day, to influence people and to seduce women.

Please, don't ridicule things simply because you don't understand. You'll end up ridiculing yourself.

It could be real science, but as currently practiced it is not. In social science everything is related to everything else, so you know the null hypothesis of "not related" or "A has no effect on B" is false to begin with. I'm sure there is some good work out there so please show me a paper that attempts to falsify a real prediction similar to "the speed of light is between 298,000,000 and 300,000,000 meters per second".

This is similar to TA. To judge a particular method's effectiveness people need to make predictions of "the price will be within this range at this time and date".

I would like to know what you consider to be a Social Science, you are encompassing a whole spectrum of disciplines.
Are you talking about Political Science, Sociology, Social Anthropology, Social Psychology, Social Neuroscience or Economy?
The way that people generalize "Social Sciences" is not only rude, but very ignorant... especially when they have a distorted concept of science even among those who claim to love hard sciences. And I blame the schools and colleges for not teaching the history of science.
I would understand from high schoolers, but seeing this kind of behavior from adults is very frustrating at the least.

First of all we must define that science is the pursuit of objetive understanding of the natural world, first and utmost.
Then IF this understanding is true, it should be testable, reproducible, therefore, it should have predictive power.
And IF this understanding is false, it should be provable as false.
This is the key requirement to be scientific.
Science+Time refine this knowledge. High accuracy is not an excluding requirement to be scientific (or to discredited), but it is a refinement of the result of this testing and retesting process over time to confirm, improve or reject an hypothesis or a theory. It is really not the result but the process that matters.

Currently all social sciences (excepting political sciences), have predictive power. Some disciplines have more, others less.
Obviously the "harder" it gets (such as the neuropsychological branch), the more accurate it will be.
And yet, all the corpus of knowledge from all the disciplines are extremely useful and relevant for our everyday life, and they are actively exploited commercially. It is so pervasive that it is transparent in our daily lives, but right now you are being manipulated by the biggest marketing firms.

You should ask yourself why did you buy the brand what you bought. You might think you had free will, think again.