Objective or subjective that is the question

[It's Snake Pliskin]

I recently read something by Linda Bradford Rashke, which is 90's material, that stated the following:

Oscillators can be considered an Objective form of pattern recognition. Whereas Traditional bar chart patterns can be considered a Subjective form of pattern recognition.

What do you think? Any discussion would be interesting to have.

 

[Frank D]

To be objective it must be known in advance.

Objective pattern recognition techniques must be purely derived
from mathematical components or sequence of components. It is the
only way you can test whether it’s objective or not.

In sense she is right, because she hasn’t defined what traditional
charts patterns are so they would have to be classified as subjective.

However, in my opinion Oscillators on their own are also subjective,
unless she is always selling the tops or buying the bottoms to validate
her argument:- Profit & Loss

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

To be objective it must be known in advance.

Objective pattern recognition techniques must be purely derived
from mathematical components or sequence of components. It is the
only way you can test whether it’s objective or not.

In sense she is right, because she hasn’t defined what traditional
charts patterns are so they would have to be classified as subjective.

However, in my opinion Oscillators on their own are also subjective,
unless she is always selling the tops or buying the bottoms to validate
her argument:- Profit & Loss

Good reply Frank and thanks for the reply.

Other than buying bottoms and selling tops oscillators are subjective?

 

[Frank D]

Subjective:- As a stand alone tool I would say yes because it hasn’t
been explained how it’s used.

Objective:- As part of a trading plan I would say no, if a secondary tool
was used.

For example: - the lower channel could be seen as subjective if buying on
it’s own, but verifying the pattern with a minor breakout set-up would
be objective.

At least the pattern can be tested to see whether it works or not

 

[SmellyTerror]

Um, I might have the wrong end of the stick here, but she might simply be talking about the value returned, rather than the application.

Oscillators are objective, because they have clear definitions. Different traders will get the exact same result from an RSI or Stochastic. They might respond in different (subjective?) ways, but the actual value returned is objective. It's given by the numbers.

A lot of charting is subjective because it's up to the trader to identify the patterns. Is that a flag? Is that an EW pattern? Different traders will get wildly divergent readings from the same data, even if they're using the same method and looking for the same thing.

That's what I would have assumed, anyway.

 

[It's Snake Pliskin]

Smelly T and Frank thanks for the replies.