How do you identify a trend?

Please share your opinion how to spot a trend? Sure, just by eye-balling a chart you could see whether the trend is up or down, but what i want is some
confirmation. For examples EMA. Sar etc.

anybody want to share? Looking for long term trend (daily chart)

something to get you started.

200 sma, 100 sm and a 50 sma many of the funds use these.

I wouldnt try and be too clever, if your looking at dailys zoom it out and what do you see. That is as good as any fancy indicator (which is based on historical price anyway)

N

thanks aftab,

i assume when the 50 crosses both 100 and 220 you enter a trade?

thanks aftab,

i assume when the 50 crosses both 100 and 220 you enter a trade?

Are you looking to identify a trend, or are you looking for a trading signal?

Don’t trade the crosses. Unless you know what your doing with other factors that happen in price action it’s bad news.

Your initial post of eyeballing it was the right choice.

The thing only goes two ways.

Up, or down:D

Easy… I look the huge Greek deficit :smiley:

In other scenarios… (also this one helps)

In order of relevance…

1.-Fundamental economic situation
2.-Day of the week and Hour of the day (Sessions are different)
3.-COT Report
4.-Pivot Points/Support Resistance Levels/ Flat prices
5.-EMAS/SMAS
6.-Fibonacci Retracements (to enter, never against the trade)
7.-Stochastic Oscillator

Indicators are incapable of “confirming” anything simply because they they are a function of price action and not the other way around.

I said it somewhere else but can’t resist repeating myself…

go to an amusement park… Look at a roller coaster
Do you need a moving average to know if it’s going up or down?

I was going to use ‘department store escalator’ as an analogy but they don’t suddenly stop and reverse direction like price. :stuck_out_tongue:

at least roller coasters go up and down

I use trend lines/channels and a 200 SMA

Go with the flow of the waves shown on the charts.

Athlon

I would never use a moving average as entry signal, However as a quick glance on the dailys for trend. I dont think theres anything wrong with that.

N

I would say the elevator is the better analogy, sure the rollercoaster is going up and down but you can see exactly where its going to go by looking at the track.
The elevator goes up and down much more randomly in a 20 storey building it might go up to the 3rd storey then then stop then go up to the 5th then stop then go up to the 7th then stop then then suddenly reverse its direction and go all the way back down to the 1st floor.

I mentioned on another thread you can use a fast rsi and look for divergence.

A simple method:

  1. Open up your chart
  2. Look from left to right
  3. If it is ascending, uptrend
  4. If it is descending, downtrend

Simple enough. :slight_smile:

The answer for the same currency would depend on how much time you are looking at.

There are various indicators to help you identify a trend you can eyeball it like you said or use moving averges or average directional index or bollinger bands to help you forcast when a pair might enter or exit a trend

I use moving average crossovers and ADX to confirm that a move is actually happening. ATR isnt bad to make sure its increasing which shows the a good trend may be starting

you dont need an indicator to show you a trend’s direction or strength.

Bullish trend = higher highs and higher lows
Bearish trend = lower lows and lower highs

If swing highs and swing lows are not indicating a bias in direction then chances are the market is ranging.

Look at the angle of the trend to get a feel for the strength. A steep angle will produce decent short term moves but will wane rather quickly.

Just eyeball it using a chart on a higher timeframe.