Why is a trend more likely to continue than to reverse?
Why is a range more likely to continue than to break out?
There are clear psychological bases for the actions of banks and institutions, the ones big enough combined to move prices.
Why would anyone want to sell an asset that is gaining in value?
Or buy an asset that is getting cheaper?
And why buy something that is not gaining value but might lose it?
Or sell something which is not losing value but might gain it?
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Markets have inertia. In a sense, inertia is the reason for both.
Inertia is a form of non-randomness. If markets were random then setups and directional bias would be useless, and there’d be no long-term successful traders making their livings from them. Markets often appear random, but they’re not. There are always both bullish and bearish professional, institutional traders trying to take each others’ money for a living, and they exert buying/pressure in doing so. Prices move to areas of high transaction-volume, and areas where there’s most buying/selling pressure.
This creates recognisable patterns, e.g. reversals/continuations: ranges, pullbacks, channels, etc., but some are false patterns created specifically to deceive others - hence the uncertainties and random appearances.
It all seems random but it isn’t really. Markets move only by intention, not on their own. A range forms because bullish and bearish pressures are about equal, and price in an established range normally continues in a range because the market has some inertia.
About 75% of breakout attempts at the top or bottom of a range will fail within five or six bars and the price will move back either to inside the range or at least in that direction. So the sensible thing to do, when prices appear to be stuck within a range of 15+ bars might be to fade the “breakout” and keep doing so - always with a sensible stop-loss - until there’s a successful one. This is - for example - the basis of Linda Raschke’s much-misunderstood Turtle Soup system.
The market’s inertia also makes a directional move more likely to continue than to reverse.
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Price is always in a channel; always in a breakout; always in a range. A pullback on an M-20 chart is a range on an M-3 chart.
Hi @minty-pip
First and foremost, if a trend is more likely to reverse, it’s called a range and vice versa. 
Secondly, on a more serious tone, these are terms that we use to describe historical patterns on a chart. We do not know whether price action is drawing out a trend or a range only until it has been drawn.
Thirdly, with that fact, what we can do as retail traders, is to wait for a breakout from a range, wait for a retest, and go for a higher probability trade. Why is it a higher probability trade? It’s because since the markets has been ranging around that zone for quite sometime, a breakout is caused by institutional interest in that particular trading pair, and has a higher probability of that break out turning into a trend.
Fourthly, I repeat, wait for a retest, because you don’t want to get stuck in a false breakout. That’s how you trade trends and ranges, waiting for the ranges to have a breakout, and stop trading when the trends becomes ranges.
Lastly, there might be some systems out there that preaches on trend trading, if that is what you’re comfortable with, go ahead. But personally, I would prefer to go in when the ranges are broken and retested.
Note: The markets are always right. 
All the best with your trading journey!
SIA
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I’ve certainly never heard this before. Nor anything similar that I recall.
Could you possibly explain it a little further, please? Or perhaps just provide a link to further information about it?
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Order imbalances will cause price to find opposing latent orders outside of a range.
If the latent supply (offers) or latent demand (bids) absorb all market orders, price will remain as it has found an equalibrium.
If the latent orders with addition to latent traders (traders waiting for better price to enter the market) overcomes the orders that brought price there, prices will reverse to match new opposing orders.
Price tends to range more than explore extremes because it takes less orders to reverse price than to keep it going through increasingly bigger latent limit orders. Example: Buyers take price up 20 pips, Strong sellers halt and start to reverse price. Buyers have already bought and new buyers have not had enough time to enter limit orders, causing price to retreat easier. That’s how we get those V-shaped price patterns.
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Hi Zen,
That first line was a statement of irony, of which a trend is a trend because it is continuously going upwards or downwards without being stuck in a closed up and down loop. A range is a range because price goes up and down in a similar price range.
From my second statement onwards it’s a more serious take on the OP’s question. 
Hope that clarifies your doubt!
SIA
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