there are actually scientific methods to prove something and that's what Finance is all about. don't let me being a student give you a sense of superiority; i'm going back for my PhD later in my career, so most of my life hasn't been spent in academia. however, my background is irrelevant for arguing a point. just look at a random walk generated price chart and there's no way you'll be able to differentiate it from a stock chart. you can draw out all the TA techniques you'll like on that random walk chart, but it wouldn't change the fact that there are no hidden mechanisms to exploit, just randomness.
for all the persistently successful TA traders there are likely many more who failed. if you took a large population and set them to trading you'll find some subset every period who were successful. advance another period and there'd be some subset of that subset who were successful. repeat for n periods and you're still going to naturally find a smaller subset of successful traders. at the end it'll look like the remaining few are gifted, but no matter how you slice it you would have had a small set of winners at the end of any random process.
Your walking chart example is not really relevant. Markets are not random. Price and volume are not random. You'd be a fool to try and trade something knowing it was not based on anything but a RNG. TA applies to real, human traded value based instruments.
Actually TA would probably still apply to this Random walk scenario. You'd see that its volume was very poor, like a penny stock, and therefore there would be no reliable way to apply TA. The edge you get from TA is very small, so ideally you'd be trading things with massive trading volume that would not be subject to random interests, blown by the wind.
A good TA trader is also not stuck in a vacuum. Its important to follow some basic news. For example if you know that some event like quarterly earnings reports or FOMC minutes are being release, these events are a spike in randomness and TA goes out the window. Its best not to trade these events from a purely TA perspective. but with proper risk management they are not such a big deal either, and will even out over the long term.
hey maybe there is something there wrt signaling and taking advantage of those signals. there's nothing in asset pricing theory, at least, that suggests TA has merit, but there's a lot we don't understand about the world yet. i just wanted to advise caution is all as there are plenty of charlatans out there selling trading strategies that don't hold up to the promises they make.
of course stock prices aren't products of RNGs, i just brought that example up to show that people often find patterns in noise bc our brains are wired to pick out patterns.
Absolutely, and caution is well advised. : ) Anyone looking to actually make a career out of trading should expect to lose their ass at least a couple times before the importance of risk management sinks in. No amount of reading/studying can prepare you for the emotional turmoil of both a losing and winning trade. Time in the seat is the best education you can get, and even with that, most are simply not cut out for it. You'll be certain of which you are after some time, if you still have any money left. trading(specifically day trading) is not about hitting home runs, its not even about getting on base. Its about following a highly disciplined art of making contact with the ball at least 51% of the time.
Like you suggest, your brain is wired to sabotage you every step of the way, and it won't ever stop trying to find patterns and giving gut feelings etc. If you can't separate your emotional dreaming from a clear rigorously defined method... you will likely fail.