As a prop company representative, one of my duties is to watch our funded traders stick to the rules and do the best they can in the ever-changing market.I have noticed that most successful traders fall into one of two categories: Some of them love the variety of futures products we provide for trading and concentrate on a single setup they love. When they see it on the chart, they simply trade it, following their risk-reward ratio. It could be anything from VWAP touch to cluster volumes accumulations. Or as simple as following an intraday trend and not taking counter-trend trades. Other traders have a number of setups they love to trade (e.g. breakout of ranging markets, mean reversal, etc.). Then they choose a single product (mos choose ES for starters) and then make most of it. They closely watch the previous day/week close, max volume for the current time frame and a few time frames higher and lower than their working TF. Both categories would have several charts open in front of them. For category 1 ("single setup") that would be any number of charts with different products, from currencies to indicies. For category 2 ("single product") that would also be a few charts. Like a triple-screen trading system. Here's a picture of one of our funded traders' latest trading day. Guess what his trading tactics is and what is his category? Which category do you belong to?
So as for now, we have almost the same number of people in both categories. This is getting interesting!
Trend is simply defined for me by 2 things: a directional movement of price (not sideways) Highs/Lows move in the direction of trend. E.g. In an uptrend, we expect higher highs.