For all my 5 months in trading, I'm learning only technical analysis but now everyone is talking about the concept of "Smart Money". So I think that trading is changing and speculators should stop trading based on technical analysis. Or smart money just a concept that cannot possibly work in the market,
Those which are often referred as smart money also use technical analysis, it is just that they are better than the majority at using that skill, whether this is because their abilities are superior or because they are so powerful they can influence the market by themselves as it is the case of the whales, however make no mistake, as long as the market is big enough and it is not heavily manipulated then technical analysis will work on it, however this is not magic and a margin of error will always exist and your predictions could always go wrong from time to time.
In the bottom line, Technical Analysis plays a key role in our trading career. However, this won't give us assurance that everything went well due to the volatility and unpredictable price trend of the market. Therefore, there is no easy money in trading, all of us must struggle with how to understand the behavior of the market and act accordingly based on our TA. If it fails, then we have to accept it rather than blame it because this is naturally happens in trading otherwise, we stop. Or improve our knowledge and skills...