When day trading, how do you know if you’re looking at the beginning or end of a trend? You need to follow trend identification rules that tend to work more often than not. Of course, just because a method has worked well historically does not mean it will continue working well in the future. Please understand there are no guarantees of future performance.

In this video, John Paul from DayTradeToWin says to be cautious around large candles. They may indicate a trend is over, as the trend may be “exhausted.” Some traders make the mistake of thinking large candles are a sign that the market is about to move further in that direction. That’s not always the case, and from John Paul’s experience, it’s more likely the market will soon stall out or reverse, as demonstrated around 3:43 in the video.

Sideways or choppy markets are almost guaranteed problems for traders unless you’re scalping and have a really good technique that gets you in and out fast with accurate prediction. As mentioned, the market can go sideways after a trend. If that’s the case, you probably want to wait it out until you see some constant direction, up or down, again.

If your connection/data provider supports it, you can always take a look at the buying and selling action, also known as Level II data. In NinjaTrader, this information is displayed in the SuperDOM. The buying and selling numbers move rapidly. Typically, we focus more on price action (patterns) than DOM action.

It’s important to enter at the beginning of a move up or down, not at the end, once the trend is over. By the way, just because there’s a period of stagnant activity does not mean that you should see a trend. As shown here, it’s entirely possible a big candle will emerge out of nowhere. Then, it’s possible to again see stagnation or a period of large candles.

In the 8-Week Mentorship Program, you’ll learn how to identify trends with specific rules. Also, the signals that you’re provided are designed to get you in at the start of a move.