DislikedIf a trader is using strictly TA I agree completely. I like to include some fundamental "why" to my trades though. Since markets move due to the actions of large players and the decisions they make, it is possible to look at a lot of the same information as them and have an idea about what they are likely to do. If you have that fundamental aspect on your side then even if the pattern isn't perfect on balance the edge should be the same. It kinda depends on the time frame you are trading though I guess because liquidity rules the lower time frames....Ignored
As to your last point, thats where things get very murky. Any trader can ask those questions, really anyone straight from 0 experiance can ask those, the real question is...are those questions relevant? And the relevan-cy (is that a word?) is only found trough efficiency, that means that behind the current price pattern there should be some decent statistical performance otherwise any of those questions are pointless, and in most cases it will be so. Finding decent performing pattern goes far beyond just drawing few lines on chart here and there. If you ask those questions behind a MA crossover "pattern" they would all be irrelevant since in the core the MA crossover pattern has terrible performance of relevant-cy (there i did it again).