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Trend

The general direction of price over a chosen timeframe: up, down, or sideways.

Trend structure: higher highs against lower lowsTwo zigzag price paths side by side; the left one steps upward with each peak and trough above the last, the right one steps downward with each peak and trough below the last.UPTRENDhigher highs, higher lowsHHHHHHHLHLHLDOWNTRENDlower highs, lower lowsLHLHLHLLLLLLHH higher high, HL higher low, LH lower high, LL lower low.
How a trend is built. A trend is just a sequence of turning points. While each peak and each dip sits above the one before it the market is trending up; once both start landing below the previous ones the structure has turned down.

An uptrend prints higher-highs-higher-lows; a downtrend prints lower highs and lower lows; a range does neither. Trend depends entirely on the timeframe. A stock can be in a daily uptrend and a 5-minute downtrend at the same moment.

Trading with the trend does not guarantee anything, but entering a pullback in the direction of the higher-timeframe trend is the most common framework in swing-trading.

Example: a stock's daily lows over six weeks are $40, $43, $46, $49. Each low is higher than the last. That is an uptrend regardless of what the last hour looks like.

Related: higher-highs-higher-lows, range, pullback, timeframe, moving-average

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