I would be the rare trader who hasn’t heard the term, “the trend is your friend.”  My entire trading system is set to identify mini-trends and take advantage of buying/selling within the trend structure.  Further, as anyone who has read this blog for any period of time, I usually avoid counter trend trades, as they are often statistically less likely to be profitable.

I use an 89-period Simple Moving Average to get the overall trend of the market.  If the daily price action is significantly above the SMA I concentrate on long trades, and conversely, if the price action is significantly below the SMA I concentrate on short trades.

Further, I use my trading software to to look at multiple time periods, ranging from 1 minute to 10 minutes, to gain further insight into the market.  For the record, I usually like to trade 2 or 3 minute periods in normal trading as this seems to give me consistently positive results.  The point is, I am constantly flipping time periods to look at the market from different perspectives.

Another tool I look at extensively is a free tool from INO that does excellent trend analysis, and the fact that it is free makes it all the more attractive.  It is relatively simple and will give you a great overall view, and statistical strength of any given trend, or lack of trend, for that matter.

The tool is simple to use, just enter the symbol for any of the instruments you are trading and a detailed and useful chart is emailed to you in seconds. I have saved hundreds of these charts and constantly compare them week-to-week, or month-to-month. They are very helpful.

Just another tool in my trading arsenal, and it’s free. Give it a try.