DEFINITION
What is a trend line?
Trend line is a trading tool used for drawing diagonal lines to identify the market condition and where the current price is in respect to the trend line and also to watch out for momentum.

By the definition alone you already have a gist of why it is good for trading and of them is a trend line is essentially a support and resistance drawn in a diagonal manner instead of a horizontal line. As the trend starts to take form you will see a trend line also start to form so you will understand the context of what the market is doing. This is why a trend line is important and so is support and resistance because they both work in tandem, where one market situation can’t be captured perfectly by the support and resistance you have in the trend line. Anything that can’t be captured by a trend line will be captured by support and resistance. If the market falls out of both of them then it’s a situation that you don’t want to be in because most likely it’s a bad market scenario.
HOW TO DRAW A TREND LINE?
A trend line is a tool and unlike an indicator where you can just set up the parameter you must draw the trend line on your own and if you do it wrong then your chance to make money disappear.
Steps to draw a trend line.
If you want your trend line to be significant you should at least start drawing it on a daily time frame because this is the minimum time frame that the big money is willing to watch. For retail traders, you can still use the H4 time frame and this is still relevant and wiped off many false signals too. So, if you want to trade using the H4 time frame then you should draw your trend line at least on the daily time frame or the weekly time frame.
When drawing a trend line you should also pay attention to the amount of history that you will use. Zoom out until you have at least 6 months of data on the daily time frame candles. If you use only a small sample of data there is a chance you are losing the big picture. You need to have a balance of relevancy and enough historical data and 6 months of daily candles is just about enough. The display used by a trader might be different because some traders will use big monitors while others use laptops and some traders like me only use small gadgets for trading (as you can always find in my trading journal EnKubo 8x5’s trading journal in this forum). That is why I came to a conclusive number of 6 months of daily time frame candles to be enough as your basis before you start drawing your trend line.
A trend line can only be drawn when there are at least 2 points to connect from high to lower high or from low to higher low. This is the basic thing to do when you want to draw a correct trend line. When you do this, make sure you only connect the obvious extreme points and not just some lower highs or higher lows. Also, don’t be too strict when drawing so you don’t get trapped with only connecting only the high price to high price or low price to low price. You can touch the body of the wick or even the candle body as long as you can have as many touches on the trend line. This is important.
One tip on how to draw a trend line properly is, contrary to the common knowledge among the traders, the fastest way to draw a trend line is actually to draw it from right to left not from left to right. Start from the end and try to get as many touches to the trend line as possible. This way you won’t have to adjust your trend line a couple of times to get the right drawing.
When you finish drawing the initial trend line you can add another line above it and if you use a laptop or computer then you can just copy and paste the initial line and then put it on the extreme so now you will have a true trend line zone instead of just a single line. You should always think of a trend line (and also support and resistance) as a zone instead of a line.
USING THE TREND LINE
There are different ways to use the trend line depending on the market situation at the moment.
Trade the bounce off the trend line. The idea of this strategy is very simple because all you have to do is to catch the movement of the market as the price bounces off of the trend line. The safe play for this tactic is to go only in the direction of the trend so if the trend is up then you should only take the bounce up and just ignore the bounces from the upper trend line. Taking counter-trend trades are very risky and especially if you don’t yet have enough experience using the trend line.

Trade the break of the trend line. The way to catch a breakout trade from a trend line is by waiting for a build up before the breakout or after the breakout. A build up could be a small pattern like a triangle or a rectangle or any other pattern but the size is mini. This is to make your stop loss smaller because to trade a breakout from a trend line you need to have a logical place to put your stop loss to achieve efficiency in terms of potential reward. Another way to break out of a trend line is by entering after a re-test because you will sometimes get this kind of scenario and it’s a good situation if there is one.

PUTTING TARGETS
Where to put stop loss?
Your stop loss will directly affect your reward potential so if you put it too far from your entry then you will get a hard time to make the target profit (in R multiple) because you need the market to move far enough in your favor for you to just achieve 1:1 RR. So how do you put your stop loss? If your stop loss is too big then you can just use 50% of the size and put your new stop loss there. This already effectively puts you in a better position and you can get your profit potential quicker. Another thing you can do is to divide your position into 2 and put half at full size stop loss and the other half at 50% the size. For the first position you will have the safety that it won’t get stopped too quickly but the potential reward is not much and on the second position you take more risk but you have the potential to make better rewards.
Your take profit level
These days, using multiple of R is a good idea because it is simple and it can provide you with more stable gains. 1:2 is a good start for setting TP but 1:3 is much better. However, you can try out your own take profit setting as you see fit. You can find a lot of articles about it on this forum.
What is a trend line?
Trend line is a trading tool used for drawing diagonal lines to identify the market condition and where the current price is in respect to the trend line and also to watch out for momentum.
By the definition alone you already have a gist of why it is good for trading and of them is a trend line is essentially a support and resistance drawn in a diagonal manner instead of a horizontal line. As the trend starts to take form you will see a trend line also start to form so you will understand the context of what the market is doing. This is why a trend line is important and so is support and resistance because they both work in tandem, where one market situation can’t be captured perfectly by the support and resistance you have in the trend line. Anything that can’t be captured by a trend line will be captured by support and resistance. If the market falls out of both of them then it’s a situation that you don’t want to be in because most likely it’s a bad market scenario.
HOW TO DRAW A TREND LINE?
A trend line is a tool and unlike an indicator where you can just set up the parameter you must draw the trend line on your own and if you do it wrong then your chance to make money disappear.
Steps to draw a trend line.
If you want your trend line to be significant you should at least start drawing it on a daily time frame because this is the minimum time frame that the big money is willing to watch. For retail traders, you can still use the H4 time frame and this is still relevant and wiped off many false signals too. So, if you want to trade using the H4 time frame then you should draw your trend line at least on the daily time frame or the weekly time frame.
When drawing a trend line you should also pay attention to the amount of history that you will use. Zoom out until you have at least 6 months of data on the daily time frame candles. If you use only a small sample of data there is a chance you are losing the big picture. You need to have a balance of relevancy and enough historical data and 6 months of daily candles is just about enough. The display used by a trader might be different because some traders will use big monitors while others use laptops and some traders like me only use small gadgets for trading (as you can always find in my trading journal EnKubo 8x5’s trading journal in this forum). That is why I came to a conclusive number of 6 months of daily time frame candles to be enough as your basis before you start drawing your trend line.
A trend line can only be drawn when there are at least 2 points to connect from high to lower high or from low to higher low. This is the basic thing to do when you want to draw a correct trend line. When you do this, make sure you only connect the obvious extreme points and not just some lower highs or higher lows. Also, don’t be too strict when drawing so you don’t get trapped with only connecting only the high price to high price or low price to low price. You can touch the body of the wick or even the candle body as long as you can have as many touches on the trend line. This is important.
One tip on how to draw a trend line properly is, contrary to the common knowledge among the traders, the fastest way to draw a trend line is actually to draw it from right to left not from left to right. Start from the end and try to get as many touches to the trend line as possible. This way you won’t have to adjust your trend line a couple of times to get the right drawing.
When you finish drawing the initial trend line you can add another line above it and if you use a laptop or computer then you can just copy and paste the initial line and then put it on the extreme so now you will have a true trend line zone instead of just a single line. You should always think of a trend line (and also support and resistance) as a zone instead of a line.
USING THE TREND LINE
There are different ways to use the trend line depending on the market situation at the moment.
Trade the bounce off the trend line. The idea of this strategy is very simple because all you have to do is to catch the movement of the market as the price bounces off of the trend line. The safe play for this tactic is to go only in the direction of the trend so if the trend is up then you should only take the bounce up and just ignore the bounces from the upper trend line. Taking counter-trend trades are very risky and especially if you don’t yet have enough experience using the trend line.
Trade the break of the trend line. The way to catch a breakout trade from a trend line is by waiting for a build up before the breakout or after the breakout. A build up could be a small pattern like a triangle or a rectangle or any other pattern but the size is mini. This is to make your stop loss smaller because to trade a breakout from a trend line you need to have a logical place to put your stop loss to achieve efficiency in terms of potential reward. Another way to break out of a trend line is by entering after a re-test because you will sometimes get this kind of scenario and it’s a good situation if there is one.
PUTTING TARGETS
Where to put stop loss?
Your stop loss will directly affect your reward potential so if you put it too far from your entry then you will get a hard time to make the target profit (in R multiple) because you need the market to move far enough in your favor for you to just achieve 1:1 RR. So how do you put your stop loss? If your stop loss is too big then you can just use 50% of the size and put your new stop loss there. This already effectively puts you in a better position and you can get your profit potential quicker. Another thing you can do is to divide your position into 2 and put half at full size stop loss and the other half at 50% the size. For the first position you will have the safety that it won’t get stopped too quickly but the potential reward is not much and on the second position you take more risk but you have the potential to make better rewards.
Your take profit level
These days, using multiple of R is a good idea because it is simple and it can provide you with more stable gains. 1:2 is a good start for setting TP but 1:3 is much better. However, you can try out your own take profit setting as you see fit. You can find a lot of articles about it on this forum.
Comment
Advanced mode Обычный режим