Certainly no trading method or tool is perfect, but in the case of oscillators, there seems to be a rather marked disparity between their popularity and their effectiveness.

Momentum oscillators are among the most popular technical indicators, but most of them, including well–known tools such as stochastics, the Relative Strength Index (RSI), and the moving average convergence–divergence indicator (MACD), were developed before personal computers were widely available. As a result, they became entrenched in the landscape of market analysis long before they could be subjected to rigorous historical testing. And having "dug in," they have proved very difficult to dislodge — despite evidence they don’t perform the way most people think they do.