[notouch]

For very short term traders it's difficult to find an edge against automated systems run by investment banks. I can't see how anyone could trade with a 10 or 20 point stop when it could just be triggered by a program. If you look at daily charts, on the other hand, they have exactly the same patterns that they had 20 years ago so nothing's changed. The same is probably true of hourly charts. I know currency traders in investment banks who trade using 4 hour moving average crossovers.

Also only a minority of trading activity is speculative. The recent move in treasuries, for example, was due to hedging and most forex volume is commercial in nature. A high percentage of stock trading is by mutual funds buying on behalf of the public. There are plenty of opportunities as long as you don't decide to compete against arbitrageurs and programs.