Do professional traders trade using TA?

This is a question that's been lingering in my head a long time but I've never found an answer to it. Any video you see on Youtube that teaches trading is either just telling you about supply and demand zones, peddling weird indicators/courses the Youtuber is selling, or drawing a bunch of lines and calling it a day. I know there is no way professional trading is like this and yet it is so mystified outside the industry. Can any trader here enlighten me on this? I'm talking equities specifically FWIW. 

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Hi Prospect in IB-M&A, whoops, looks like nobody chimed in here.... maybe one of these discussions below is relevant:

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Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

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I know you said equities specifically, but since nobody else is coming in...

In FI it's something that we can look at, but its not really just looking at a chart and saying 'oh we broke resistance' or something. if something is trending strongly/is optically mispriced it's a signal that something is usually happening there. Maybe there is a certain buyer that is quietly pumping a price up, or bank funding is dictating a change in behavior for non-market reasons that is having market impact. I view it generally as technical signal -> research underlying reason -> determine value of signal and act.

 

I am only an intern but on our trader floor yes. Sales Trading Desk does use some technical analysis because they need to forecast the intraday price movements. Not sure whether that’s accurate tho. I was told by a senior to read more about technical analysis and send him my opinion everyday regarding the index. But I think this is only his preference cuz he used to be a great retail investor before joining our bank.

 

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