A post in this forum proved to me that no one understand trends. The comment was that, to find a trend, you have to have one point at which you do not have a trend, and then the next candle closes and you say ok, now this is a trend. People said that was incorrect. That is the only way to identify a trend. Therefore, no one understands trends. Except @IronFist, who by his own admission mentions his way is one way of many to do it, but at least he understands this concept and has left no room for ambiguity.
A bit of poetic license here. The bottom line is that the term refers to increasing risk. Which, in principle, is not unlike calling tops and bottoms and then doubling down.
Trends are a series of higher highs and higher lows (or lower lows and lower highs) that persist over time. That's all there is to it. Keep an open mind, don't marry one strategy. You are 98% mean-reversion is the way to go until you mean-revert your way into a margin call when the market starts trending and never looks back.
If you carefully read the article, you will be able to understand the analysis. Analysis of the market and all charts, as well as news, is very important for any trader who wants to have a good profit.
Trading is not a zero sum game. You have fees for brokerage, data, you don't want to call in orders so equipment, apps on computer to keep it safe, and backups brokerage, cloud backups, servers near where your exchange you are trading and more equipment when and not if something stops, room to stick all the equipment and phone lines for different connections-pretty soon you feel like you in Nasa's mission control room. Let's discuss time loss, if you are trading full time and you had $250k job you gave up to do this, you should know how much you were making per day, loss of health, vacations, disability insurances, retirement and possibility of stock options benefits. So excuse me if I say you are so wrong if you think it is just trading fees. And even if you unemployed kid who quit college and sleeping in parent's basement, someone is footing the bills. No, not zero sum game by far. Costs a hell of lot more now than the 80s and brokerage was very expensive, but a chart book and pencil and landline phone all needed.
I don't think any of the concepts is useless. The real challenge is, using the concept properly and knowing when another concept has overriden the previous concept. Trading is a mix of innumerable number of factors. So, you have to be alive to the changing dynamics rather than sticking to any one concept and then discarding it, if it fails on any particular occasion.