back at satan,
yes, in a sideways, all breakouts are fake but one !
I know you were joking, but just to make it clear for everyone, this is why trading all breakouts in a sideways can really kill you. a sideways consolidation can last much longer than you think (the worst everybody knows now is the dow jones industrial.. for 2 years I think and the break out was down ! the same happens in much smaller time frames of course, since the market is fractal).
and back to neo (the one from croatia),
knowing when the market is trending or not is an holy grail. because if you know that soon enough, you always know when to increase size and when to get out.
so the answer is not simple.
the more lag or delay you accept, the simpler the answer is. Just set a MA on a chart. the line will tell you if the market is going up, down or sideways. to be accurate the MA parameter must be big enough, the bigger, the bigger delay you get (vicious circle). But still, you can know easily what is the market condition.
In another thread I mentioned that I prefer trader vic's definition of trending (derived from dow theory). there is still some lag, but somehow, it removes the subjectivity of selecting parameters to the indicator (it is back to price and time only, no indicators, and that's good).
in my systems trading, I use other ways to detect sideways and trending without much lag at all. so there are ways. but that's a bit proprietary.
keep it simple. trader vic's approach is very accurate but not everyone likes it. Moving Average approach is very quick although lagging a bit. You NEED to know in what mode the market is. whatever you type of trading. even scalping I had bad experiences ignoring the current condition (and scalping is the less influenced by higher time frames conditions).
neo