Long time ago I used to think the way you described: that technical analysis is BS.
But then I gradually understood this: in most cases the market behaves the way people think it will behave. This is just an inherent feature of a market: it creates its own future.
So even if what people believe in is BS, if enough of them share this belief when they watch the chart, this BS will materialize and it might turn out it was not BS after all.
Thus on the rational level your are right. In reality however, you are totally wrong.
"in most cases the market behaves the way people think it will behave", no, only half of the time, market only goes up, when everyone think it's going up but a few of them have bought in, but when everyone think it's going up and most of them ALREADY bought in, there is fewer buyers left, it will crash. it's 50-50, so it's still random
There is some of that but also when you feel you missed something it creates an urge to hop on. charts often show the urge as it flows through the population of traders. There is always too much uncertainty about the right price.
Yeah, this is true... if enough people believe that if the market does a loopty oopty, then it signals a bullish reversal, it will be a self fullfilling prophecy... These shapes and signs of course don't mean shit, but the fact that so many people believe that they do mean something can make meaning out of nothing. Just like how money has value... we make it so...
it does not mean shit how many people believe anything, it also depends on how much money those believers have to invest, if those many people believe price will go up, but they already went all in, and no more to buy, it does not matter how firmly they believe in it. the hard part is to estimate, at which point it's overbought, it's almost a random event, harder than predicting earthquake