How to figure when market is trending

Hi,
I have built a system that can put a few trades and works very well in trending market. How do I figure out or predict when the market will trend v/s when it won't. On a non-trending day the system is useless, and full of losses.

Any help is appreciated.

I am newbie here, but as i know, to know it, you can check with ADX.

so when its in the sub 20's its non trending?

LOL we'd all like to know that one....

You might look at breakouts for an indication of trendiness.

You might look for extremely low values of adx and then for adx to rise and break above some value.

The way to try and predict trends are numerous. You have to have know the market behavior, s/r points, chart patterns, candle analyst, etc. What exactly is your system missing or not doing for you? Let's see if we can tweek it.

from what i can see, you are trying to figure trends and thats fine but once u start too add a few more, stuff in it, it will not work the same way anymore. for all you know, you are likely to miss a lot of the "trending profits" you used to make.

Trend following systems are like that. They are geared to harvest $$$ during good trends and whipsaws on bad trends.

I don't know what Wilder's formula for the ADX strength line was, so this may actually be something like it, but here's a simple way to gauge trend strengh. Over some number of past bars, "N" just divide the total range during that period by the number of bars times the average range of a single bar. This value will range from 1/N to 1.

So if you have 100 bars with an average height of 20 pips, the maximum possible total range (perfect trend) you could have over that period is 2000 pips (this would be with the high of each bar equal to the low of the next bar for instance; no retracements at all). The actual total range over the period will be some percentage of 2000 and that percentage is your trend strength.

So if the total range was 170 pips, you'd have: 170/(100 x 20) = 8.5%

A good trend is one in which bars overlap prior bars the least. This formula quantifies that. It would be pretty rare to see values over 50% for large numbers of bars. Obviously, if you pick small periods like 5 bars, this "trendliness" value would often have much higher values. This points out a sad truth about trends: most don't last long.

Hope this helps!

There is no way to accurately forecast a trend consistently. A method will be hot sometimes and cold others.

You could run your method both long and short in two accounts, and hope to compound the crap out of it one of them if you are lucky. Of course, you could have a sideways market, and lose on both accounts.

I think you are on a wrong way. There is no any methods to know when the trend begins, if you would know that then just follow trend. May be the best advise is to understand that the market is in trend and then make trades.

You may want to post this in a beginner section, this is not a trading system

ForexHorse wrote :
You can use Bollinger Bands indicator to predict it.

U can use a 123 fomation or like i was told, if the price on the right of your screen is higher than the price on the left of your screen the trend is up and vice-versa. there is always a trend if not on daily tf then 4hr, 1hr etc. look for higher highs with higher lows or lower highs with lower lows. Hope this helps.