lol it does mean something...
it's not predetermined, it's chaotic... but chaotic patterns... have.. well, patterns within themselves.
if you look at it from a macro perspective and see a pattern then you can have a better chance of guessing what it's gonna do next!!!!
that's all that it is man!!!
as long as there's a pattern, you can predict better than if there were no pattern.
and like i said, if enough people believe the pattern and act on it, then it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
a simple example is, human pattern of behaviour. if someone in a crowded area shouts fire, or bomb. you can graph it out or pattern it out... and there's a high chance that the pattern is the same almost every time.
so the NEXT time someone shouts fire, you'll likely be right in betting "most people are gonna run".
same goes for anything. whether it be combat amidst a battlefield. the market. physics. or "fractals" (although all the things i mentioned are fractals themselves).
the meaning is self fulfilled.
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind: Gustave Le Bon: 9780486419565: Amazon.com: Books
that's a book you should read.
when you look at charts, all it is doing is charting out human behaviour. humans behave in very obvious patterns. it's only obvious when you take yourself out of the equation and remove ego and emotion.
the meaning behind fractals may be "unknown" or not knowable.
but the prediction behind the next wave of pattern WITHIN the pattern is knowable.
meaning and reasons, do not matter... at least in predicting the markets.
a good example are those IQ tests where you look at shapes. you're just looking for patterns your brain is able to pick up and trying to predict the next pattern by eliminating the others that don't follow the perceived pattern.
there's another example where scientists did a study. they got a buncha successful technical traders, to analyze some charts. all these traders analyzed the charts with their own methods. and they all had different things to say. most of the made money.
now here's the funny part, the charts were generated completely randomly. they weren't real. they were "random". if they were random, how were all these technical traders able to analyze something that is just BS?
it's because they are not analysing the MEANING behind the chaotic charts. they were just looking for patterns which have repeated and managing risk based on known patterns of behaviour.