Identifying osscilations and trends

[Duffman316]

Trying to figure out a way to identify oscillating markets from trending ones while it is happening in time span of your choice (minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc).

Certain I'm not the first to ask this question. Is there any particular indicator that helps identify this?

Google just turned up ADX, i shall be looking into this... open for suggestions on other ones though

 

[bbmac]

I use price action itself. Ie overall price action-peak/valley analysis. A market (t/f) is classically trending when in a downtrend there are a succession of obvious fractal swing LH's and LL's and conversely in an uptrend a succession of fractal swing HL's and HH's. In a ranging/consolidating market there is a seemingly random distribution of fractal swings - HH's, HL's, LH's, LL's, L's and H's which may be in no particular order.

A market (t/f) that is not classically trending or ranging could be said to be generally bullish when say the 50sma remains over the 100sma with price above it or in a generally bearish market when say price reamins below the 50sma which is in itself below the 100sma.

G/L

Trying to figure out a way to identify oscillating markets from trending ones while it is happening in time span of your choice (minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc).

Certain I'm not the first to ask this question. Is there any particular indicator that helps identify this?

Google just turned up ADX, i shall be looking into this... open for suggestions on other ones though