Looking at the bigger picture

It's always worth zooming out on a chart every once in a while to look at the historical price movements and trends on an instrument, and to place any current trend into context.

I've shown some charts below of interest (using monthly candles). What is interesting here is how certain markets have been in a non-trending phase the last couple of years compared to the nice trends in the preceding decade. This explains the difficulty that trend following systems have had generating profits over the last year or two. In those instruments that HAVE trended, the movements have been far more volatile, which again makes it more difficult to generate profits.

If you consider yourself to be a longer-term trader (or investor) then looking at charts on this particular timeframe is a great basis upon which to identify longer-term trends, and to identify when such moves have come to an end.

They also fill a trend follower (such as myself) with a degree of anticipation, as no doubt a pronounced trend will start in some, or maybe all, of these markets in 2013, which will no doubt fuel profit-generating trends on shorter timeframes, such as the daily timeframe that I predominantly use.