speculation on recent TA patterns

[mav]

I've seen a few TA terms mentioned with respect to the action in the past few days.

Cup and Handle is one pattern
Flag/Pennant is another

I'm wondering for those more in the know than me:

How long do you reckon the 'handle' of this cup will be? How long will the flag be?

Is a flag the same as a handle if you ignore the leading pole/cup respectively?

Is it common to see multiple patterns arise for one piece of data? When this does happen, does one pattern usually tend to be more indicative than the other? How about in this case? Which is dominant?

If the price goes down instead of up after this, was it neither a handle or a flag? Does that defeat the purpose of assigning a pattern to it in the first place?

What kind of tolerances are those claiming to see these patterns putting on their observations? Or is it just a matter of eyeballing it?

And of course, ultimately, who will win - HANDLE OR FLAG?!!!
http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=handle&word2=flag

I realise that these are not particularly constructive questions, I'm just curious about this pattern matching because not many places I've read about these patterns have put hard metrics on their definitions and they feel a bit fuzzy and done with a 'looks close enough' attitude. I'm still finding it hard to see how TA is not some sort of magic (purely based on my reading about it on the internet). I would like to be convinced otherwise.

[TraderTimm]

It just takes experience and time. I knew some guys who traded certain patterns (of course, they didn't divulge what it was for fear of losing their edge) pretty reliably. I would see them initiate buys and sells, then hop out with a nice bit of cash.

I can't say I'm at that level, but I do know chart patterns. The problem of course is, how do you classify a pattern, and what do you do when that pattern seems to 'evolve' into something else? Subjectivity being what it is, I can look at a chart and see one thing, you another.

Its a best guess, really - based on prior behavior of price. I find it also to be quite enjoyable to attempt.

[Sitarow]

Charts are all well and good, however they become skewed when people start using BTC for everyday transactions.

People who trade goods and services for BTC may not wish to hold onto said BTC therefore it gets exchanged back into USD or Euro's.

Point is large volumes of BTC trades can make charts fluctuate wildly.