[kimchi]

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Digging up an old thread here because I was going to make one about Elliott Wave:

Do people actually believe this stuff? If it was even possible to time the market this way, everyone would be doing it and it would no longer be predictable in this matter.

Also to the person above, who trades by this? Do enough people do it to actually affect the market?

I guess it's not suprising that I don't believe in the Elliott Wave principle anyway, since I'm an EMH guy and I think timing the market in any form is impossible.

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You don't need to solely look at it as timing the market, it's also about finding the path of least resistance. If you can identify an upwave, then you can look for opportunities to go long (such as during a pullback) which would provide a trade with reduced risk.

I've never looked seriously into Elliot Wave, Fibonacci sequences or other 'abstract' forms of TA. I'm sure they can be traded profitably, but then as Dr.Van Tharp pointed out in one of his books, you can trade profitably based on the results of a coin-flip provided you use good position sizing, risk management and exits.

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If it was even possible to time the market this way, everyone would be doing it and it would no longer be predictable in this matter.

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This isn't true. Richard Dennis (and I think Ed Seykota) have been quoted as saying that they could publish the rules to their trading methologies as a full page in the WSJ and people still wouldn't follow them.

There's a lot more to any trading methology than timing your entries and exits.