Check if the trend exists in higher time frames than the one which is your trigger.
If you are taking entries on a 1 min chart, check the 5 min, 30 min and 1 hour.
You should be able to see if a trend exists, on any time frame visually and also by seeing mainly higher lows for a long (up) trend and lower highs for a short (down) trend.
I also check where the MACD lines are. Is the fast line crossing the slow line and for more confirmation is it pointing up (long) or down (short).
The above example is also good for targets. If you only see trend on the 1 min then your target would be less than if it exists say up to 30 min.
This is summary on price action is worth a read, see the part about trend:
simplest thing to do is just draw trendlines - support for uptrends and resistance for downtrends and see how many times they are tested and rejected - look at the eurusd in the chart factory for a recent example...
Quoting varunk666
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Does anyone have specific strategies to determine the strength of the trend?
my question to you would be in what ways would you like to be able to use the information if you could determine the strength of a trend?
i have some proprietary indicators that i have built for my purposes.
i use the information to guage how much room is left for a pair to move inline with the current short term trend (could be inline wiht the main trend)
AND i use ti to gauge when a pair may be near exhaustion of a swing for a given timeframe. This alerts me to the potential of a Counter trend move.
It also gives me clues about where to scale out profit; in particualr the bulk of a position. The main TFs i view are the M30 and H4, looking for setups inline with the Daily and when possible, inline also with the weekly trend.
I have also developed a tool where you can get a quick idea about current mkt conditions for 16 pairs. I use it as high level scanner to cherry pick the best 2-4 pairs fo further analysis.
