Let's completely forget about trying to pick exact tops/bottoms. Much less trying fade trends, by trading against the main trend. This just doesn't work consistently. So how to spot the early signs that the trend changed. How to protect yourself? Where to place stop loss orders? Reversal orders?
There are no "magic bullets".. wherever you decide to fade, chase, or set your stop... IT'S ALL A GUESS. The ONLY thing you can do with certainty is limit losses on individual trades.
As you go from trend to trend taking profits through each trend, you probably notice what happens during the end of each hold before you decide to take profits. This singularity (meaning this thing that ALWAYS happens without fail) is very instructive. Keeping you first paragraph in mind (all of which lead to consistent profit taking) what is left, primarily, is this singularity that you see EVERYTIME before the end of a given trend. All traders have two components of their capability. One is resources and the other is technique. It is difficult to not use the techniques in the first paragraph if you have the resource (the singularity) that relates to the end of trends. Your focus is trying to cut losses. I do not deal with that ever so I can't help you out with how you have losses from trends. It is generally tough to have losses in trends. Most people have the capability to draw the envelopes of trends. They usually do this at the first opportunity. They also extend the trend into the future by using projection. I'm sure you do not do this as a trading RESOURCE. If you did then you could see, at any time the stop value on the chart that represents to price at which the trend is no longer going on. It is the price value on the right trend line that was past on the last completed bar before the one forming now. I'm sure you do not use this RESOURCE that is available either. Just as you do not know when a tend is ending, you do not know when a new trend is beginning. If you knew when a trend is beginning, you would know when the prior trend is ending. Explaining this to you is made difficult because you do not have any of the above mentioned RESOURCES to build upon. This is because you do not accept any input to be learning. The singularity that is so POWERFU is that trends ALWAYS OVERLAP. Once a person LEARNS to draw trends and the first opportunity and then project them into the future (I doubt if your charts have white space to the right of the forming bar. Your forming bars are probably on the extreme right of your charts. You may not even have a platform that affords the opportunity to draw lines to the right of the forming bar.) Some of these things are the reasons youwrote the first paragraph that lists the handicaps you have chosen to have and continue. People who chose to call the tops and bottoms based on trend overlap make a lot of money. They do not deal with losses of trends either since they do not have any. All trends overlap. you do trading (a technique) at the beginning of a new trend which coincides with the beginning of the overlap. As usual you will not do the work of learning how to see trends overlaping and you will continue to choose the contents of the first paragraph as your belief (which are incorrect for expert traders and all traders who are mentally prepared to learn to trade).
Disagree 100%. A good trader will definitely know when a new trend is developing once price acts a certain way for a certain period of time. You won't be able to to figure that out immediately once a new high is reached, but give it a certain period of time, and once price reacts a certain way, you definitely know a new trend will develop before it develops.
Read Jack's post as many times as you need until you understand this: He thinks a trend is knowable/predictable. Once you reach that conclusion, you post another message saying "I Agree 100%," OK? A little help: he thinks the OP, repeat, OP, doesn't have the ability/resource/skill/brain/heart/kidney/eardrums to predict the trend. After you post your 100% Agreement, come back to my post and read this statement: I disagree 100% with you and Jack.
Good for you. I am front running you it turns out. And I do more frequent trade segments ( I trade "inside" you as well). I know before the high is reached in your long example. You need to begin to consider leading indicators of price. BTW it is a good idea to think with a neutral bias since the market, while counterintuitive, is symetric.