You are certainly experienced to know if you expand timeframe to larger, at some point, you made trend work for you. But any kind of retracement can be said to be counter-trend. You slap an 18sma and it is sloping down, you have lower highs/lower lows and lower closes to make that 18sma to force down(I am describing what truly is simple but often times those who don't know how to read charts and only use TA, they don't understand what causes the 18sma to slope), so we wait for price to retrace back to 18sma, prefer soon after trend change and can do a host of different entries, #1)sell it on the 18sma, #2)sell it on first close above the 18sma, #3)wait for price to touch the 18sma then sell it couple ticks below highest low, #4)find 50% of last swing high to current lowest low, when price retrace 50%, sell it there, #5)comparing closes with volume=interest-as price closes going up-on reduced volume, sell a breakout going down, Triple top, Double top, Head and Shoulders=sell on breakout with the slope of the 18sma or cause lower highs/lows.
You trade long enough, you lose concept of trend and entry price does not have to be perfect. You look across the room at a chart, is current price higher or lower than 30 minutes ago on timeframes under 30 minutes. You spend most of your time back testing so you can control risk, it is the part right after you enter the market and till the end=control risk. Risk of price and time.
In theory every trade has 50/50 chance of success/failure, so we find patterns and backtest to know the probabilities, so we make comparisons and back test more, we test for the "mean" of best protective stop areas, targets, how much time do we give it to go to an area where we can move protective stops to breakeven plus a tick.
To trade well and precise, one thinks outside the box, you break down swings a great more, break down lengths by the hour, differences of going up or going down, importance of contraction and expansion, tight bars leads into expansion, huge and fast bars going in one direction often leads price to go opposite. New reports, often times first move in 2 seconds is wrong. A trader has to brainstorm then spend mountains of time backtesting.
Counter-trades are like bungee cord you are attached, based on weight and length of person, length of where you going to jump and the bottom and how many times used-you live or lose.
