Is the trend really your friend?

hey there. again, my main questions are in bold so that they are easier to read. (i hope i’m not becomnig too much of a nuisance around here :D.)

one thing i realised about myself is that trends don’t convince me; they look too obvious. to me, if it looks obvious then the big traders are sure to spot it and reverse it. [B]is this the case most of the time?[/B] and [B]how do you measure how established a trend is[/B]?. because of this, i find that everytime i enter a trend, it has reversed. so i find myself continuously looking for turning points and exiting them too early as i fear that the new trend will reverse again. i tried reversing my buy/sell strategy but i realised that this would mean i’m gambling, and so i’m not going to do that any more. [B]when do you usually enter an existing trend? [/B]

thank you in advance,
adam

You need to decide which trend you are in, is it long term, medium
term or short term. My idea is that you are looking at short term
trends, which can be very illusive because of the nature of the forex
market.

The forex market does not move straight up & straight down, it meanders
along with the psychology of the market, fear, etc.

You really need a system to tackle these anomalies, there are many
about see the “free forex systems” forum, also read about,

Peaks & troughs, Trend lines, Support & resistance, et al. either in the
babypips school or at Investopedia.

hey there daydreamer,

thanks for the help, but i’ve already read about all of those in the school and the dummies’ guide.

i was talking about trends on daily charts. it just seems to me that every time i trade on the trend, it magically breaks. one of my theories is that i’m too impatient, but i’ve waited for almost 2 weeks for a specific trend to resurrect itself and so far it hasn’t.

You need to pick pairs that are more trendy…EUR/USD
is a good one…alot of pairs out there are very choppy hard to pick up a trend
you need to apply some indicators, RMA’s etc.

I tend to look at the DAILY to see if there is a trend
and put my trade in on a 15min or 60min…

Lately i try to trade more on long term…short term trades will stress you out too much…remember it takes people YEARS to get a good system, sometimes your better off flipping a Coin to see what to do, the economy is all messed up right now…which makes the currencies wacky., i think some good money will be made after we (USA) elect a president…i think the dollar has been getting its a s s beat too long that TREND is going to turn around

Money too be made in 2009

Maybe you need to drill down a little more onto the 1 hour or 15M
charts taking with you the trend from the daily & 4H, especially if
you are impatient to see results. Over time these faults should iron
themselves out.

Have a look at

http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/6632-alternative-technical-templates.html

&

http://forums.babypips.com/free-forex-trading-systems/2950-40-100-pips-per-day-live-trading.html

Because I have been on this forum a while now, I can tell you that a trader, Bazooko, did just that as an ongoing experiment on this forum.

Every day he tossed a coin to decide whether he would trade long or short.

He has gone now, a pity, but his thread was interesting.
He proved that good money management could keep you going even if you made random trades long or short.

The thread is, of course, recorded on this forum.