I will define what I call a trend but I don't claim that my definition makes what we all see on the same chart a trend. Its just a trend as far as my strategy is concerned. Its not a fingerprint. For me to get long, I need to see on the D1 chart the 20EMA above the 50EMA and both sloping upwards. That's it. Reverse for downtrends.
This could be another "semantic" argument in play, because some traders refer to rangebound markets as being in a "sideways trend." I was never real comfortable with that term, but it's no big deal either -- semantics. And I suppose if that's your style of trading, then trading off the upper and lower bounds of that sideways range is kinda analogous to trading pullbacks/rallies in a up- or down-sloping trend... ?
Its possible that the trends I follow can form a leg of a range on a very long time-scale but ranges are not patterns I look for or mark on the chart. I don't even seek or mark support in downtrends or resistance in uptrends, nor trend channel boundaries or trend-lines or highs and lows.
Thank you. I hold to the view that TA isn't to depict what the market will do, it is to identify what the trader will do and how he'll do it.
You are betting the market will continue doing what it is doing. So you are betting on the inertia of the market. There is merit to that. I do it too. But I also bet on the odds of patterns. I could, and sometimes do get it wrong. However, I imagine you have had trends STOP.. REVERSE.. and TAKE OUT your stop.
Tom, I use Resistance as upside targets to long trades and Support as short side targets to short trades the same way runners or bikers use landmarks along their route.
Don't many trend traders look for minor support in uptrends to buy pullbacks, and minor resistance in downtrends to short rallies? I do, in combination with MAs -- which can be viewed as essentially dynamic trendlines. I understand (now) that you don't. But that was be the analogy I was making relative to a sideways range (/"trend") trader who shorts near the top of the range, and buys near the bottom... which is what I thought Volpri was describing:
I regularly buy in an ongoing uptrend at a lower daily high. But that's not really a support level. I don't buy at lows of pull-backs.
It rarely happens but its always a minor possibility. There are I reckon 7 things that price in a trend can do next and the least likely is reverse. But that's what stop-losses are for.