Data can’t be trusted. Stare at the numbers and things will always go wrong — if you don’t understand the business, the data will trick you forever. Numbers are written by people; they can deceive, and they don’t tell everything.
Technical analysis is the disaster zone. If chart patterns really contained a story, some repeatable edge, machine learning would have squeezed it dry decades ago. There’d be nothing left for a retail trader drawing lines by eye.
But what about your own backtest — isn’t that data too? Here’s the crucial distinction: an indicator someone hands you and an indicator you’ve verified yourself are two different species. The annual moving average tracks the trend — I didn’t take that on faith; I backtested it myself. Tested, it graduates from data into evidence. Untested, the prettiest curve is still just someone else’s number.
So the rule isn’t “avoid data.” Data must pass two gates: first, understand the business — what kind of business did this number grow out of; second, run it yourself — does the conclusion survive new samples, new years. Pass both, and it’s evidence.
Data is someone else’s answer sheet. The business is the exam. Copy the answers, and sooner or later the exam changes.
