Supertrend is a good indicator. Price above it is consider uptrend and below is considered downtrend. Like other trend following indicator it also suffers during trading ranges but not as much.
Then there are linear regression related indicators - especially Linear Regression Slope which shows the direction and strength of the Trend.
Instead of regular OHLC bars/candles, one can use different charting style like Point and Figure, Renko, Kagi, Three Line Break, Heikin Ashi etc which show trend much more clearly. My personal favorite is Three Line Break.
Even Keltner Channel, MACD and MACD Historgram are good trend indicators but they are based Moving Averages.
use the technical Indicator ADX & DMI
I found the ADX to be very useful in indicating trend
plain price is the best we had to know the trend . keeping things simple pays more . its not the indicator or any method that is good for trading its the man who pulls it . even a moving average based system was profitable if you had pre-defined rules . go with larger to smaller timeframe you can get some clues of trend
Donchian Channel is a very powerful indicator to develop Trend following systems. It works extremely well in Trending markets both in Intraday and Daily timeframe. Donchian Channel is derived by calculating Highest High and Lowest Low for a pre-defined period. Any breakout of Donchian channel upper or lower band is considered as the starting of new trend. Donchian channel was originally devised by Richard Dennis, and is the main idea behind the famous Turtle Trading System.
Check out the below strategy based on Donchian Channel to discover Strong trends
| Paramter | Value |
| Preferred Timeframe | Daily |
| Indicators Used | 5 Period Donchian Channel |
| Buy Condition | Current Candle High is greater than Donchian Channel upper band. |
| Short Condition | Current Candle Low is less than Donchian Channel lower band. |
| Sell Condition | Current Candle Low is lower than Donchian Channel middle band. |
| Cover Condition | Current Candle High is greater than Donchian Channel middle band. |
| Stop Loss | Trailing Stop Loss based on 25 period ATR |
| Targets | No fixed target. |
| Position Size | 150 (fixed) |
| Initial Equity | 200000 |
| Brokerage | 100 per order |
| Margin |
10% |
The detailed backtest report and AFL code of this strategy can be found below:-
http://tradingtuitions.com/afl-of-the-week-donchian-channel-trend-following-system/