Look it’s not your fault but you are doing it all wrong. Don’t feel bad, it’s simply that nobody ever taught you how to do it the right way. No I’m NOT talking about that thing your spouse complained about the other day – your secret is safe with me. I’m talking about trendlines and specifically the right way to draw them. And how to profit in the process of course!
The vast majority of traders draw trendlines in anticipation of a downside break. We talk about support lines and yes indeed they are useful but NOT in the way you THINK they are.
Here’s exhibit A, also known as the trendline most people would instinctively draw on this chart.
This is a mistake. Think about the level of thinking and the psychology that drives this. We see a bullish trend and we want to identify the most optimal times to BTFD if you will.
Now let me ask you this – how OFTEN in your life have actually done this? Bought the low and laughed all the way to the bank while the market ran off and never looked back?
I for one have been in this racket for longer than I care to admit and I can probably count the times having perfectly nailed the lows on one single hand.
Which means technically speaking the bounce you see is valuable in retrospect but it’s not very actionable. Meaning most likely you were too chickenshit to back up the truck while that 2600 mark was in place for a matter of an hour or two.
Case in point: Did you buy Bitcoin at $29,000 the other day? Exactly…
See where I’m going with all this?
Trend lines near support are valuable only in retrospect as they help us determine if a trend is still in place. But they are nearly useless when it comes to trading them.
Now THIS is how you draw a proper trendline: In the direction of the trend. Which is UP in this case, so we draw it along the upper ranges where resistance produces downward pressure.
Doing it like this seems counterintuitive but as usual there’s method to my madness.
Think about the implications of a positive trend overthrow in a long term trend. What’s happening here is a late stage trend that is attracting so many buyers that it’s actually accelerating and steamrolling anyone standing in its way.
A great example would be bitcoin or ethereum earlier this year in late April before they went exponential.
Did you buy ETH at 2800? Of course not – because like Pavlov’s dogs you have been conditioned to buy the dips, which in reality you’ll never do out of fear.
It’s the break to the UPSIDE you want to be part of, because when FOMO is the law of the land, that’s when trading fortunes are being made.
Of course any rally fueled by FOMO doesn’t end well as it usually precedes the final stages of a bull market about to roll over.
Crypto is its own beast but bull markets in stocks are a lot like oil tankers or cruise ships – they take a LONG time to keel over and finally sink. Plenty of money to be made during that process.
Especially during times when there aren’t many safe harbors left to keep your assets from depreciating to zero.
Now how would you like me to teach you all this stuff and then some?
Then look no further than my Price Action Masterclass in the Academy section where I cover everything you ever wanted to know bull markets, bear markets, sideways markets, toxic markets, easy markets, how to trade them, how not to trade them, basically the full Monty.
And it’s no dry academic material either. As always I teach by example and you will quickly learn how to properly read any type of price action without having to resort to a stack of useless indicators.