Stock Trend Analysis: how to analyse a Trend
We saw that stock market trends provide critical insights into future stock price movements. Understanding market trends allows us to see beyond the obvious, and sometimes, prevents us from making crucial mistakes. But what is the point in simply understanding and not being able to spot such trends for yourself? In order to reap these benefits, it is important to be able to first spot market trends and then, decode them. In this section, we will try to do exactly this.
These are the movements in stock prices in a certain direction. This is usually for a longer term like a few days, weeks or months. We saw that stock market trends provide critical insights into future stock price movements. Understanding market trends allows us to see beyond the obvious, and sometimes, prevents us from making crucial mistakes. But what is the point in simply understanding and not being able to spot such trends for yourself? In order to reap these benefits, it is important to be able to first spot market trends and then, decode them. In this section, we will try to do exactly this.
Market trends are always taken into consideration when trading in stocks. Any seasoned stock trader will tell you that without knowing trends in the market, traders find themselves lost. Trends allow you to know the direction the market is taking, upward, downward or stable, and also tell you something about potential future directions. Many traders study previous market trends that align with circumstances in a country. For instance, knowing about historical trends of the market during similar times of inflation or economic downturn may help to analyse a stock’s return potential. You may also be able to determine a particular sector to invest in by analyzing the markets regularly.
It is important to grasp the functioning of any markets you trade in.
- Share Market Trend or equity market trend analysis is the process of analyzing current trends in order to predict the future trends. Using share market trend analysis, you can attempt to predict if a particular market sector growing now would continue to grow in the future. Or, will a market trend in a particular sector start a trend in another. This process of share market trend analysis involves a lot of data, but nobody can predict the trends accurately with 100% guarantee.
- Share market trend analysis is an aspect of technical analysis that tries to predict the future movement of a stock based on past data. A share market trend is based on the concept that the past movements are windows to the future trends. There are three main types of share market trends: short-term, intermediate-term and long-term. You can also classify trends as uptrend, downtrend or sideways trend.
- Some information about markets and trends will give you insight into how markets work. In the bull and bear markets, the primary markets, history has proved that trends last for one to three years. If you do a share market study, you will learn that a secular trend can last even for up to a decade or more. This is a very long-term trend. Within any long-term trends, you may have intermediate trends that send business journalists and analysts into a spin. These may be sudden shifts in the current trend that move markets in an opposing direction to that which has been the trend for a while. For instance, after a period of an 8-month downward trend, a market suddenly shows an uptick, but these may be short-lived and are the result of equally spontaneous political or economic actions and reactions.
- Uptrend
- Downtrend
- Sideways trend
- Uptrend
- Downtrend
- Sideways trend
- Moving Averages: These strategies involve entering into long positions when a short-term moving average crosses above a long-term moving average, and entering short positions when a short-term moving average crosses below a long-term moving average.
- Momentum Indicators: These strategies involve entering into long positions when a security is trending with strong momentum and exiting long positions when a security loses momentum. Often, the relative strength index (RSI) is used in these strategies.
- Trendlines & Chart Patterns: These strategies involve entering long positions when a security is trending higher and placing a stop-loss below key trendline support levels. If the stock starts to reverse, the position is exited for a profit.