#TrendTradingStrategy

Markets aren’t always trending. Some veteran traders follow a maxim: The market trends only 30% of the time, and that the remaining 70% is spent in consolidation or sideways movement. In a sideways market, many trend followers get whipsawed—establishing positions, closing them out when the market hits their stop-loss order, reestablishing a position (or switching from a long to a short bias), and getting stopped out again. For a trend follower, sideways markets result in frequent but small losses (what technical traders call “death by a thousand stops”).

There can be many trends within a large trend. Depending on the time frame you’re looking at, you may find smaller trends nested within larger trends, which can be confusing for less-experienced investors.