Many new traders fail in their attempt the corner the financial markets because they don’t master simple trading strategies. Instead, they spend large sums of money for sophisticated software that they’ve been told will make trading easy and wealth a guaranteed.

Of course, nothing is a guarantee in the financial markets. But a little knowledge goes a long way. And one of the soundest pieces of advice you’ll ever hear, if you haven’t already heard it a million times, is “the trend is your friend.”

That sage advice sounds simple enough. But what does it really mean? Many traders disagree when asked to define trend. And so newcomers to the market understandably susceptible to advertisements that promise fortunes with little work.

The purpose of this article is to teach the reader how to recognize a trend change. This technique can be used when trading stocks or commodities.