Your best method for identifying a trend please

I'm looking for different points of view, how to spot a trend, how to avoid false breakouts.

I study price action and news, and like to use as few indicators as possible. I usually buy on the pullbacks and reinvest on each pullback, moving the stop as I go, until the trend reverses. I only want to invest in prime market conditions. Feedback on how to see this clearly is what I need.

When a trend is strong I like to set time aside and scalp it as much as possible, then exit the market and take a break when it looses steam. Like surfing.

I am not well educated in corresponding markets, such as commodities, stocks, etc, but I am studying finance to learn more. How can these help predict a trend? Examples please. Any educational resources would be appreciated.

you Joined Forexfactory 2007 and you are still asking such questions!!!!!!!!!







i quit!!





anyways all the best OP, i hope you find what youre looking for.

I am a beginner, so far I understand that when I find supply and demand levels the trend can usually be identified, but you have use turning points, resisance levels all together to identify with less risk. I am not sure if false breakouts can be avoided but you can reduce risk by setting your stop loss and not moving it.

You look at the chart and if the prior price on the left of you screen is lower than then price at the right of the screen then it is an uptrend. If the price on the left of your screen is higher than the price on the right of your screen then it is a downtrend. Very easy. All the best.

First figure out to read bias and momentum without charts.
Then you will understand the rest.

Firstly trending markets aren't always the best to trade.

Secondly to identify what "phase" is currently in place, you must know which "phases" exist.
Let's keep it basic: Trending, Range Bound, Consolidation and Random.

Then depending on the Time Frame you are looking at, it could be different.
Ex. Daily is ranging, 4h is consolidating and 15 min is trending.

So depending on your "edge" in the market, i.e. your trading method and more importantly your trading plan, you need to determine what factors must align for you to determine the "phase".

Then what is a trending market? For me in simple terms: Higher Highs & Higher Lows (Swings) for Bull Trend and vica versa for Bear Trend with retracements occurring at significant points. If this scenario is broken, re-evaluate using Price Action what could be happening. The market doesn't always move as pretty as we want it to. So in the end it is about probabilities enhancement and confluence.

i think in my opinion a candle stick chart is also helpful in learning the trends more easily..

everything is on the charts

1. You cannot predict a micro economic trend. Stop trying, instead react to the volatility.
2. If you see a trend you should be swinging and not scalping.
3. When the market loses steam, how do you know that it is not flag and is a true reversal? How do you know to hold through the pull back?
4. Please remember that every wanna be guru csn dissect an after the fact chart. Without a track record, take what we all say as a grain of salt.

I took a long break for inner meditation to let everything go, including my attachment to money. Just looking for a fresh perspective. I consider money a philosophical tool to meditate on, it represents allocation of life force energy, which is what I have been learning from my inner work. If you consider money symbolic of the main polarity that reality is made of, there is much to learn. The two forces are life and death energy, like money. What is life to one is death to another, and vice versa, just like money. Misuse of life-force can harm, just like money, because it throws other's out of balance. Responsible stewardship of life force results in health and happiness, same thing with money. It's just a form of energy. My goal is to master the "root of all evil" greed itself, and find the proper balance of polarities in my own existence, by meditating on it as I trade.

I read the pdf. Looking into it a bit. I usually just use lines and fibs. Larger fibs and smaller fibs for support and resistance. I scale in on the dips and then try to ride the trend all the way, moving the stop on the dips, adding more money, then getting out when my stop is triggered, but also taking some profits at the peaks, kind of a combo. Multiple entries and exits hopefully diversifies the risk.

News is good to trade due to the small daily trends, always trading in the direction of the larger trend, marked with fibs and s/r lines. Once the momentum of the news hits, the fibs and s/r lines are fairly accurate. The Euro session open and the beginning of the US market are good for this volatility. Depends on how much time I have. I am considering some long hours of focus scalping and then taking another break and moving to larger swing trades. It requires knowing the flow of the market, studying the news, etc. After not scalping for a while I have to get up to speed.

makes perfect sense bro! tnx for answering me.

Acquire support and resistant knowledge, if you can identify logical levels of current market than it would be much handy to identify market flow rate! Use Horizontal line, trend line and Fibo in this case!

Hey

Trends confuse me as well. I get the overall concept of higher highs/higher lows and lower highs/lower lows but what confuses me the most is that the chart has constants of both of those, so identifying the trend causes me a real headache, as in how do I know when the next lower low has been made for example when it makes new lows all the way through the big down swing?

I have attached a screenshot with some drawings on it, i can see it's overall a down trend, what i get confused is when i am looking for the swings, there are loads of swing lows in that whole trend, so how do you determine which ones actually class as the lower highs and lower lows? It's really confusing!

What i am basically trying to say here, is the swing low where i have put a number 1 was the lowest swing until number 2 appeared, so how on earth do you know if the new swing low has been created yet or not?

If i was to enter a trade as it came back to the trend line, what if it never reaches the trend line? How am i supposed to know where the swing back down will be (lower high) ?

See i get the whole concept of the technical analysis, but putting it into practice brings up so much confusion and so many questions. On that chart i can literally see it swinging high and low all the time, so what makes certain swings so special in terms of the trend? I wish someone would explain this lol

I really don't know if i am making sense or not.

Look at the charts from left to right - has the price gone up or down? Easy is best

Mayby use 1,2,3/ABC like HIGH , Higher Low, Higher high etc.

Well, I don’t use any indicator or any technical tool! I determine current market trend according to the position of support and resistant area! I seem, this is the most reliable way of identifying market trend! On the other hand, I open my trade only when I am very sure about the market trend status!

Hello

Thank you for the answers, i definitely haven't explained what i am trying to ask very well at all, difficult thing to put in writing. I will reply again when i figure out how to word it.

ok, here is a better example of what i am trying to say. Which one of the lines i have drawn is the actual trend?

My confusion is because the purple line shows the down trend on the highest swings, but the blue line shows a trend that connects more of the higher swings than the purple one. You can see where I circled in purple a lower high that hasn't come up the the purple trend line, however , drawing the blue line where i have has cut the top off the blue circle.

So which is right here? What happens if the current price action on the lowest swing comes up through the blue one and hits the purple again? The is where i get confused as to what lower highs to use when drawing the trend line as the purple circle seems to be still going down but is dropping away from my trend line, so waiting for it to retrace back to my purple trend to take a sell would take hours and hours, and might not even get there.

So can you see my confusion? Any ideas on what i'm doing right and what i'm doing wrong?

In all honesty i think my biggest problem is patience. Waging for the action to come back to the trend to then put in a trade with the trend direction is slow, it's boring and frustrating. On the 1hr charts it literally can be days before the setups come in, and because i have such a small balance in my trading account it feels like making 1 or 2 trades a week is pointless because it doesn't make much money. For example my balance is 10 at the moment, which means i will only risk a max of 0.50 per trade making 1 to 1.50 profit, kinda seems pointless after waiting 3 days for the setup that might not actually turn out right. It's like you need a good amount of money to begin with or you'll be here for years trying to build it from small. There is then the problem of closing off the charts so i'm not staring at them waiting all day, i come back and likely missed the entry point i was waiting for.

with a freaking moving average !!! also the bars in general are printing higher?? or lower??, what do you think its happening?? =)

draw major support or resistance (action levels) and thats it