A simple form of technical analysis, and one of the best.

Trend trading is simply the idea that if you want to make profits, buy something that is going up. When it starts to go down, you sell. The idea is that trends do tend to persist for a while, and the best way is to get in on it and hang on while the price goes up.

In a more cynical phraseology, you can put this as "a trend in motion will remain in motion until it stops". Wonderful, tell me again how many thousands that trading course costs?

However you put it, going counter-trend is certainly even more dangerous, buying a stock that has been falling steadily for some weeks now is asking for trouble. The million dollar question is, how long is this trend going to persist? Trend traders are purely reactive. They don't try to be clever and do any forcasting, they just take positions in the same direction as the market has been moving over whatever time frame they operate in, run their profits as long as possible while the stock is uptrending and quickly sell when the stock starts to fall. Most good futures traders, who almost exclusively use technical analysis, make up for generally terrible "hit rates" by making a much larger profit on their few winning trades than they lose on their numerous little losing trades.