Trends & trendlines
Which way is price really heading?
Read
One green candle is not a trend. A trend is the footprints price leaves behind — and once you can read them, direction stops being a guess.
Ask ten beginners "which way is this going?" and you get ten confident answers pointing in different directions. The problem? They are all staring at the *last candle*. But a single candle is a heartbeat — the trend is the whole walk.
Think of it like tracking someone through snow. You do not watch their feet; you read the trail of footprints and see plainly which way they are heading.
Three directions, read from the peaks
Price leaves two kinds of footprints: peaks (the highs) and valleys (the lows). Read how they stack and the trend names itself:
Uptrend — each peak is *higher* than the last, and each valley is *higher* too. Price is stair-stepping up. Downtrend — each peak is *lower*, each valley is *lower*. Price is sliding down the stairs. Sideways — the peaks and valleys are stuck in a flat band, going nowhere in particular.
An uptrend needs BOTH ingredients: higher highs *and* higher lows. If price makes a new high but then crashes to a lower low, the climb is already in trouble. Always check both.
Drawing the handrail
A trendline is a single straight line you draw along the edge of a trend to make the direction impossible to miss. Picture a handrail that price leans on as it climbs a staircase or slides down a slope.
In an uptrend, connect the rising valleys *underneath* the price — that line is the floor price keeps bouncing off. In a downtrend, connect the falling peaks *above* the price — that line is the ceiling it keeps failing to break.
Two touch points are enough to draw a line. A *third* touch is what earns your trust — it proves price is genuinely respecting that handrail, not just brushing past it once by luck.
A trendline is not a prediction. It is a handrail — and the moment price lets go of it, the chart is telling you something changed.
When the handrail snaps
Trends do not last forever. When price closes firmly through its trendline — not just a quick poke, but a decisive break — it is a warning flare that the trend may be running out of steam. It is not a guarantee of a reversal, but it is a loud "pay attention now."
So why obsess over all this? Because a trend is the path of least resistance. Trade *with* it and the whole crowd is already pushing your way. Trade *against* it and you are swimming upstream — it can work, but you had better have a very good reason.
Countertrend trades are the siren song of overconfident beginners. Until the chart clearly changes its mind — a broken trendline, a new set of lower lows — assume the trend continues.
You can now name any trend from its peaks and valleys and draw the handrail that tracks it. Next up: the specific price levels where trends love to pause, bounce, and turn — support and resistance. 🧗