The essence of technical analysis lies in quantitative summarisation and statistical observation of historical market behaviour, capital flows and crowd psychology.

Price action and candlestick patterns reflect the power tug-of-war, liquidity build-up and risk preference between buyers and sellers at a given time and space.

Whether it is the "bullish ascending triangle at bottom" or various moving average and channel breakouts, their function is never to "predict the future". Instead, they identify statistically favourable "high-probability windows" amid uncertain markets.

Therefore, technical analysis is essentially probability distribution in statistics, not definite causal relationships why do many retail investors still struggle to profit in the market even after mastering technical patterns?

The reason: solo retail traders face inherent disadvantages. They have outdated trading tools and are clearly outmatched by institutional players in capital and information.

Technical analysis reflects public, observable market data. Retail investors can read it, and so can institutional investors.

However, the stock market is a zero-sum game. For institutions to make money, they need to push retail investors to sell low and buy high