All traders need to know if the market is trending up, down, or sideways, even if they aren’t trend followers. Countertrend traders wait until trends dissipate to take the other side of the trade, so they still need to monitor trends. And countertrend traders must rely on some type of price trend from the time they enter the market to the time they exit.

Different trends develop on different time frames. Clearly, a trend that occurs within a 10-minute period has very little to do with the market’s weekly trend.

There are countless ways to identify a trend, and many traders complicate the process by relying on indicators that are, by definition, one step removed from the market.