Hey @bitbrain, while I agree that TA can seems futile on altcoin during a Bitcoin bear market there were times (spring 2017) where altcoins were completely decorrelated from Bitcoin and flying on their own, back then TA on alts had some utility. As far as only doing TA against the /BTC pair, I quite disagree, a winning trade should be measured in dollars, not in BTC, particularly when BTC is bearish. Just my 2 cent :)
Ha ha ha! You're one of those guys! Man I have had horrible fights with the altcoins/USD crowd in the past: "my BTC value is down, but I'm still up in USD" makes my skin crawl! 😂 I firmly believe in referencing all altcoins back to BTC, it's the only way you see whether you should have invested in alts or if you would have been better off in BTC.
For my own portfolio tracking: I work out my BTC value of the portfolio every day (which tells me if my alts were a good idea to invest in or not) and then I calculate the value of that in USD (which follows the market trends).