The Trend Is Your Friend: Meaning, Origin and the Bend at the End

"The trend is your friend" means that traders usually do better trading in the direction the market is already moving than betting against it. If a stock keeps making higher highs and higher lows, the saying tells you to look for reasons to buy rather than reasons to short, and to stay with the move until the trend clearly changes.

The full version adds a warning that matters just as much, because the trend is your friend until the end when it bends.

Phone case The Trend Is Your Friend Phone Case for Swing Traders Printed for your exact model after you order. $32.99 USDChoose your model

Where the saying comes from

"The trend is your friend" is old Wall Street wisdom with no confirmed first use. It is often credited to Martin Zweig, the investor and newsletter writer behind the book Winning on Wall Street, who also gave traders the line "don't fight the Fed," although the idea itself was already central to how many commodity and futures traders worked in the 1970s and 1980s.

The longer ending, "until the end when it bends," has been repeated on trading floors and forums for so long that its author is hard to pin down, although it is sometimes linked to the trend follower Ed Seykota. Whoever said it first, the two halves belong together, because one tells you to ride the move and the other reminds you that every move ends.

What the trend is your friend means in practice

A trend is simply a market that keeps moving in one direction more than the other. In an uptrend each pullback stops above the last low and each rally pushes past the last high, while a downtrend does the reverse with lower highs and lower lows. Trading with the trend means buying pullbacks in an uptrend or selling rallies in a downtrend, so that the bigger flow of buyers or sellers is working for you instead of against you.

The opposite approach, trying to call the exact top of a strong rally or the exact bottom of a steep fall, is where a lot of traders lose money, because a market moving hard in one direction can keep going much further than seems reasonable to the person fighting it. Shorting a stock because it "can't possibly go higher" has emptied plenty of accounts.

How swing traders use trendlines

Swing traders, who hold positions for a few days to a few weeks, often use a trendline as the simplest map of a trend. In an uptrend you draw the line under the price by connecting at least two of the higher lows, and a third touch that holds gives the line more weight, while in a downtrend you draw it above the price across the lower highs.

Once the line is on the chart, it gives you a plan in both directions. A pullback that dips toward the line and bounces is the kind of entry many swing traders wait for, and a daily close well below the line is the kind of signal that tells them the trend may be over. A typical pair of journal notes might read like this:

• "Uptrend since August with three clean touches on the trendline, bought the pullback to the line, stop under the last higher low."
• "Closed below the trendline on heavy volume, sold the rest, treating the trend as done until it proves otherwise."

Trendlines are subjective and two traders can draw two different lines on the same chart, which is why many also watch a moving average such as the 50 day or the 200 day and treat the line as a zone to pay attention to rather than an exact price. Logging each trade next to the line you were trading is the honest way to see whether you follow your own rules, and that is what The Edge Journal is built for.

Why trends bend and break

A trend lasts as long as buyers keep showing up at higher prices, or sellers keep showing up at lower ones. Eventually something changes, whether that is an earnings report that disappoints, a shift in interest rates, a crowded trade that everyone is already in or a stock that has run so far that the people who bought early start taking profits, and the trend rarely announces any of this in advance.

That is the whole point of the full saying, because the end tends to arrive suddenly, often as one sharp red candle that undoes weeks of steady gains. Traders who forget the second half hold on through the break, telling themselves the trend will resume, and often end up as the people described in our guide to bagholders. A planned exit, such as a stop under the last higher low or a rule to sell on a close below the trendline, is how trend followers try to respect both halves of the phrase.

Related terms

A bull market is a long uptrend across the whole market and a bear market is a long downtrend, which our guide to bull vs bear market explains, while a brief rally inside a downtrend that tempts people to buy too early is known as a dead cat bounce. "Don't fight the tape" is an older way of saying the same thing as the trend is your friend, from the days when prices came through on ticker tape.

The design behind our trend case

Every swing trader has lived through the moment this saying warns about, which is why we turned it into a case. On The Trend Is Your Friend Phone Case for Swing Traders, eight green candles ride a clean trendline until one red candle drops straight through it. The twist line underneath reads "until it leaves you on read," which is roughly how the trend ends for most of us, without so much as a goodbye.

The case has a two layer build with a hard polycarbonate shell and a TPU lining and a glossy dye sublimation print, and it is printed for your exact phone model after you order. It fits 34 iPhone and Samsung Galaxy models, works with wireless charging but not MagSafe, and ships free in the US.

If you want to read a trend one candle at a time, our guide to green and red candles explains what each one shows, and catching a falling knife covers what happens when people bet against a trend that is still pointing down.

Frequently asked questions

What does "the trend is your friend until it bends" mean?

It means you should trade with the trend while it lasts but stay alert for the point where it turns, because every trend ends and the traders who ignore the change usually give back what the trend gave them.

What is the full quote of the trend is your friend?

The version most traders use is "the trend is your friend until the end when it bends." The first half is often credited to Martin Zweig, while the longer ending has been passed around for years without a confirmed author.

Who said the trend is your friend?

The saying is often credited to Martin Zweig, the investor and author of Winning on Wall Street, although the idea was widely used by trend following traders and nobody can confirm a single first use.

This guide explains a phrase and is not financial advice.

Digital download The Edge Journal: Trading Journal Spreadsheet Works in Excel, Google Sheets and Numbers. Instant download. $9.00 USDGet the journal