My opinion on this being a day trader is the 30 min. trend is still strongly down.. no reason to get out of any shorts. Now actually being able to trade it that way is somewhat difficult for me of course..
Your question proofs already the worth of trendlines. You can drawn as many trendlines as you wish; and i garantee you that afterwards 1 of them will surely have been the right one. Problem is only to know in advance which one to take. To me trends are based on momentum. But because momentums change slowly you have to find a way to get faster signals.
Sure, no problem. If you have a problem reading either the longer term trend here (Higher highs & Higher Lows) or the reading the pullbacks (from the higher high to the higher low or from the higher low to the higher high) I'll give you the name of a couple elementary logic books to smooth the process out for you.
How many candles ? For daytrading I use 5 min charts to determine trend, then 1 min to pinpoint reversals. Trendlines continue into the future and if drawn correctly they can be very decent predictive tool . So if one knows how to draw trendlines, one can know areas of reversals. I think this might be helpful to many. Yes, enter Monday 9:55 est .
As daytrader i look for the trend on 60 minutes charts; look for entry points on 15 minutes charts; and fine tune on 3 minutes charts. I don't scalp, i try to take the maximum ride. Today short at 1217 (ES june 2005) and still short. The profit is in the big moves, not in the scalps.
Nice . . . almost identical here except I exited for lunch @ 11 am EST and re-entered short @ 1 pm. I love trading those non-existent imaginary trends. 15 points of imaginary trend money.