The unintuitive thing about the stock market is that you are not trying to predict a system unrelated to yourself. But you are trying to predict other people's behavior. People who are just like you.
So when you notice a pattern - say "Stock S trades lower on Tuesdays and higher on Fridays", what do you do?
Do you buy on Tuesday to exploit the pattern?
Or do you buy on Friday because you are not a unique snowflake and others will notice the same historical pattern and therefore reverse it in the future?
There is no way to decide. Because even if you see long-running patterns in the history of the stock market, those patterns might have reverted just at that moment when people like you noticed them.
This holds for all patterns. Even if they are as complex as the ones described in the article.
So when you notice a pattern - say "Stock S trades lower on Tuesdays and higher on Fridays", what do you do?
Do you buy on Tuesday to exploit the pattern?
Or do you buy on Friday because you are not a unique snowflake and others will notice the same historical pattern and therefore reverse it in the future?
There is no way to decide. Because even if you see long-running patterns in the history of the stock market, those patterns might have reverted just at that moment when people like you noticed them.
This holds for all patterns. Even if they are as complex as the ones described in the article.