Momentum, trend, support in trading

Three basic elements all traders rely on in their pursuit of profit are momentum, trend and support. But that's only the basics that are not necessarily guaranteed to make you money.

However, you can easily improve your odds of success using those very same basic elements if you combine them, and the more creative you are while doing so, the better. The edge often comes from looking at old things in new ways. I use the very same indicators most people out there can easily get access to, but that does not mean I use them the same way everybody else does. And that's what I believe gives me some advantage over them.

An indicator, as I like to say, is only as good as the trader who uses it. The same is true about various setups that traders use. They are only as good as those who mastered them and so studying these things and practicing them first in simulated trading and then in actual trading is the key to your success as a trader.

These three basic elements can indeed be easily combined to enhance your chances of success. Let me offer some simple example of how to do it, which hardly is any secret yet can certainly be useful.

Let's consider support and trend. You can try to pick tops and bottoms, hoping that the market will eventually establish some support in there and the reversal that you are betting on proves solid. but you can also let the market start a trend, and when it crosses a certain threshold, you can enter then in the direction of the developing trend, using the price between the top (or bottom) and the threshold for your support. This immediately gives you two things that you would not have when picking tops and bottoms: a better (for thicker) layer of support and an indication that the market wants to move in your trade direction that you obviously don't have when going counter-trend.

You can also combine a trend with momentum and support. How so? Here is one example: imagine a trend is developing as suggested by your indicators.

This usually is accompanied by a surge in the price momentum, but the indicators that point to a developing trend (such as moving averages of various kinds) can also offer a good suggestion as to the position of support for your trade, so you could enter in a pullback and then add to your position if necessary and possible in the area of support, relying on the fact that the momentum not infrequently guarantees that the trend in the making will continue, at least for one, perhaps relatively short leg, but long enough to squeeze out a few ticks of profit, which is all that many day traders care about, anyway.