My personal priorities for trading:
1. Discipline to consistently follow your trade plan.
2. Proper journaling of trades.
3. Effective trading strategy.
A simple combination. But definitely not easy to execute.
I honestly don’t have a specific book to recommend to you on trend. Like many have said in your post there are a lot of ways to do it and a lot of it is subjective.
My only advice is that as you learn about different ways to identify trend, if you find one that makes sense to you use that...
And of those 6.5 hours the market only really moves at a the opening bell for an hour or so and again near market close. During the middle of the day price tends to drift.
Japanese market opens at 8:00 pm EST. Try any spot pair with JPY in it. Eurusd has movement too.
You can also set up trades to hit in the London Market which gets busy 2:00-3:00 am. EST.
I also expected and still expect more downside and was sitting on the sidelines in cash.
But I can’t ignore the current trend. I’m now in long until trend tells me different.
Congrats on your profit today. I can tell you’re excited. But I suggest you rethink your reward to risk in how you set up your SL. A few losses back to back will hurt you far more than a few wins will benefit you.