Determining the Trend

If anyone would be grateful enough to share their thoughts on the following topic, that would be sincerely appreciated:

I usually trade on the 15 minute charts. In determining the “trend,” I know that there are a number of ways traders go about this, whether its using the 5 EMA & 10 EMA of the 4 hour chart to determine the trend of the 15 M chart, or whether ther price is above/below the 100 SMA, 150, SMA, or 200 SMA.

Personally, I believe drawing trend lines on the daily chart is the best way to determine the trend. However, I’ve been back testing with software that I need to program, I while I am proficient in programing with indicators and moving averages, programing trend lines is beyond my capabilities.

Just to contribute my two cents to the topic, I have found that the 21 EMA & 55 EMA work well on the 1 H chart to determine the trend on the 15 M chart (ie., If 21 EMA above 55 EMA, then trend is up, etc.) I chose 21 and 55 since they are numbers in the fibonacci sequence, no other reason.

Also, I’m not too convinced of the merits of the ADX/DMI.

So, if would anyone please let me know how they go about this?

Thanks,

I’ve found that, “ichimoku kinko hyo,” (sorry if thats spelled wrong) is EXTREMELY STRONG in finding the overall trend on daily candles. In fact I’ve found it’s the best indicator package I’ve traded with, to the point of I will not trade with anything else on my screen except zdx pivots for bounce & tp points.

You can find out more about it at Ichimoku Discussion Forum: Forex, Stock, Commodities, Futures, Bonds Look for the instructional section not the forum.

How I use it for trading daily candles is to look at the D1, two time frames above and two below. Above for overall long term trend or resistance to watch for, and lower for closer resistance and tighter entries.

With ichimoku the cloud is the heart of the indicator package, take everything as a whole picture. For me, on the D1, I only take longs if the price is above the cloud and only look for shorts if it’s below the cloud.

I use the higher and lower time frames to find a good entry. I normally enter at the start of a new daily candle at the start of the week, and try to ride the whole week trend.

Keep in mind though Ichymoku is desiged for D1 and is strongest there. What the overall picture means on D1, doesn’t mean the same thing on the other timeframes, which is why I also use the pivots.