Hi Michael, the transcript is now available for download!

The short answer is yes. Mish has been doing this a long time, though her methods have evolved with the market. As with all trading methodologies nothing is 100%, but with proper risk management and strict adherence to process there are many different "formulaic" ways to trade profitably. This is the opening to a piece written yesterday by a hedge fund manager who's private twitter I subscribe to. As I'm not giving away any of his trades or analysis I hope he will not mind... "I’ve found over the years that not only does market analysis not need to be complex, but complexity often makes things worse. Our propensity to overthink is as dangerous as it is hard to resist. The joke at my old firm when I would get something wrong, or lament about having to stop out of a trade, was “you’ve got to get a lot dumber if you want to be a really good trader.” And, like most effective humor, there was more than a kernel of truth to it. My fundamental background made it very hard for me to avoid getting lost in the weeds. I’d typically either be putting too much weight on what were really second/third order effects or applying longer-term analysis to a much shorter-term trade horizon. These days, I feel like I’m finally dumb enough to be a decent trader. As many of you have probably noticed, I try hard to keep things really, really simple. I focus on sentiment swings, positioning, and plausible narratives. I then match these thoughts up against chart and correlation patterns. What follows is what I’m seeing now."

Technical analysis really works, but you will probably need 10+ years of practice day in and day out to get it right. Maybe 2-3 years if you follow a mentor who knows what they are doing and you make pages of notes every single day on the markets. Active trading is the Olympics of the finance industry, and that's why so many people lose. Imagine yourself with no practice in any sport, walking into an Olympic event, thinking that you have any chance of beating the olympic athletes there to fight for gold, AND you bet your own money that you will beat them. How do you think that will pan out? So since you are asking that question, I think you better stay away from active trading and do whatever it is you are good at. Just because you can click a mouse to make a trade, doesn't mean you should and that it "should be" easy or even fair. The whole world is doing whatever they can to make it "unfair" (as they should, just like the athletes).

Just out of interest what other technical indicators do you guys use? I'm using the basics such as 50 / 200 day moving averages. Anything you guys found useful beside those?