dkeller: bingo...when you don't have institutional money at play and barely any accredited money (i bet less than 3% of the investors here are for example) the patterns have much less to work with. ie; no sustained accumulation on a big scale. you have random retail buying when they stumble upon the stock, and some insider volume before news, but no money is sitting there accumulating the stock for a real portfolio.
the early TA literature is based on the concept of mapping the "accumulation" of retail shares by institutions on the way up and the "distribution" of those shares back to retail on the way down. ie spotting the elephant's footprints. if you take them out of the picture it gets tough... LOL...i don't know if you ever traded at the CBOT but imagine walking into a grain pit and busting out charts during harvest season when the commercials are at it.
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