Well you may deny it has to do with religion, but as as you happen to be a churchgoer I think those beliefs have a lot to do with your slant that "every bar has a purpose & reason and no bar is random." (From previous banters on this subject).
Actually, the appropriate question is "are markets predictable?", a question that's been asked since markets were invented and smart people since then have and continue to try to anticipate what markets will do, seconds, minutes, hours or days ahead. I think markets are manipulated in an effort to sway them one way or another, successfully or not. We know they are because people get arrested and jailed, but not all do. In that sense, market may be predictable just enough for some to become very, very rich.
Most people don't understand the market. It depends on how you look at it. Market is not random but it follows a random walk. Take temperature as an example. If you measure the temperature every minute or second from 6 a.m. to 12 p.m., you will notice that it follows a random walk. You will not be able to differentiate the chart from a stock market chart. But you know that the temperature in the morning is around 17' Celsius and and at noon it's about 22' Celsius.
It is impossible to see the market in its entirety , that is, to understand every miniscule movement and the cumulative ripple effect each little nudge has on the whole . Best you can do is trade in the shadows of the shadows. Ever watched those tiny little gnats that fly around in total harmoney in your garden? They are a living organism suspended in midair embraced in a complicated and seemingly random pattern of to and fro flight maneuvers. Stand there and try to predict the next configuration. Or the direction the collective gnat mind will steer to in the next instant. Impossible. And no technical analysis or bayesian statistical breakdown is able to predict it either. To you it is random and forever will be. It is art. Don't be so clever even if you are. It's hard because the urge is to figure it out. Just take your chances and trade the market. Each moment is unique. You are wasting time trying to figure it out. Get in and keep getting in and eventually you will find the flow and learn to be a gnat who doesn't understand what is going on but at least you will be in the game and just going with it. Then you can come back here and join the flow of stupidity and pretend you know what's going on like everyone else does.
There was a poster here some years back, Maestro, he appeared to be very clever and had the largest trading monitor display ever seen, he used to post pics on ET. He was into studying herding of animals, in particular how flocks of birds flew in large masses without colliding, similar too, schools of fish. His theory was humans behave similar in trading, swarming to move price about.
Yeah, I recall him. He was advocating some zero line theory or something. Was doing very well. Not sure how he is doing now.
First of all, a mathematic genius Edward Thorp says market is not 100% efficient. Our job as a trader is to identify repeatable inefficiency in the market and measure whether the inefficiency is profitable to be exploited or not. It was long ago that I debated with fellow offline wannabe traders and myself. I originally believe market is random/efficient because I was starting as investor, not trader, with mantra market is like voting machine in short term and weighing machine in long term (Benjamin Graham). Once I explored short term trading, I have no choice but to believe what Thorp says even though yet to have a profitable trading system. The reason I trusted Edward Thorp is he is friend of Claude Shannon. Long story short, I figured out by myself by building countless trading systems. Those experiences of building/testing a trading system gives me knowledge of what doesn't work and left me what works. I define the moment of inefficiency in the market as when buyer/seller overcomes seller/buyer.
Thank you for mentioning him. He started the thread Intuition Amplifiers 2. I've started reading through and mind blown
1. No. What it is, is unknown. You do not know what the next bar will be but you can gain information from that next bar which will help you in deciding if it is a continuation bar or not. 2. Refer to 1.