I'm glad this was posted; I thought it was well-written and humble (both the original and follow-up), and interesting to me personally anyway. My impression fr

I'm glad this was posted; I thought it was well-written and humble (both the original and follow-up), and interesting to me personally anyway. My impression from the limited research I've done into technical trading is that - just like a lot of things in life - it's a lot of work. People who go into it hoping to make it big on one lucky score seem to get slaughtered. A lot of technical analysis indicators seem to be not about the companies themselves (which is fundamental analysis) but about determining the trend of what other people think about those companies/stocks (the "Kenesian beauty contest" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_beauty_contest) So I think it's a little more than sheer chance/luck, but it also definitely seems to require a lot of work and staying glued to the market/indicators/news. It's appealing intellectually because of the "game" aspect, but I think the reality is that like anything else it requires a ton of work to succeed at it, especially in the beginning when you're still cutting your teeth and learning hard lessons. I appreciate that the author wrote candidly about his experiences learning the game/trade.