Keeping track of the main trend is important for many obvious reasons, one of them being that bull and bear markets have different characteristics and often require the use of a different set of technical analysis tools.
The "trend is your friend" maxim sounds simple enough and appealing, but when it comes to its practical implementation, can cause a lot of frustration and headache. That's why in our newly developed and just released OT Signals web app, we've included a Bull and a Bear Trend Indicator, which allow you to adjust their sensitivity to counter trend rallies and stay longer with the main trend.
For example, the use of the Bull Trend indicator with weekly SPY would have kept you out of all but four of the corrections since 2010:
While the use of the Bear Trend indicator with GLD would have allowed you to avoid multiple whipsaws during the 2010 bear market:
You can also compare the performance of these trend specific indicators with the trend neutral, generic swing indicator, or the BuySellHold indicator included in the package. This side-by-side comparison should help you gain a better appreciation of these new and exclusive tools.
Liquidity and sentiment are some of the indicators not influenced by price and volume action, which help us in deciding whether to adopt a defensive or offensive attitude towards the market. At the end of last week, bulls retained the upper hand in both of them. You can follow these indicators daily on OT Signals as well.
