The Truth About Trendlines: Are You Drawing Them Wrong?If your trendlines look like a toddler took a crayon to your chart, we need to talk. Or if you draw them so much that your chart looks like a spider web, we still need to talk.
Trendlines are one of the most abused, misinterpreted, and downright misused tools in technical analysis. Used correctly, they can give you a structured view of market direction, potential reversals, and areas of interest.
Used incorrectly? Well, they can be your fast lane to bad trades, broken accounts, and questioning your life choices.
So, are you drawing them wrong? Let’s find out.
📞 A Trendline Is Not Your Emotional Support Line
This is big because it happens virtually every day across the charts. When a trade is going south, it’s tempting to adjust your trendline just to make your setup look valid again. That’s not technical analysis—that’s denial. A proper trendline should connect clear pivot highs or lows, not be forcefully manipulated to fit a bias.
Traders do this all the time. Price action no longer respects their original line, so they just… move it. As if shifting the goalposts somehow changes reality. It doesn’t. If your trendline gets broken, respect the price action and get out, don’t adjust the line because you risk dragging your account deeper in losses.
🤝 Two Points Make a Line—But Three Make It Real
Here’s where most traders mess up. They draw a trendline the moment they see two points connecting. Sure, two points technically make a line, but two random highs or lows do not make a valid trend.
A legitimate trendline should be tested at least three times to confirm that price actually respects it. Until then, it’s just a hopeful hypothesis. But we gotta give it to the early spotters — yes, if you see two points, pop open a trade and it pans out nicely, then you’ve chomped down on the good grass before the other animals.
The more times price touches and respects the trendline, the stronger it is but the risk of it getting overcrowded increases. Anything less than three touches? You’re basically trading off a hunch with a potentially higher risk-reward ratio.
⚔️ Wicks, Bodies, or Both? The Great Debate
Should you draw trendlines through candle wicks or just use the bodies of the candlesticks ? If you’ve spent any time in trading communities, you’ve probably seen this debate get heated enough to break friendships.
Here’s the deal:
If you’re trading short-term price action, drawing trendlines using candle bodies makes sense because it reflects where most of the market agreed on price.
If you’re looking at major trends, wicks matter because they show extreme liquidity zones where prices actually reached before snapping back.
⛑️ Steep Trendlines Are a Disaster Waiting to Happen
If your trendline looks more like a vertical cliff than an actual slope, you might want to reconsider its validity. The steeper the trendline, the less reliable it is.
A proper trendline should represent a natural flow of zigging and zagging price action. If it’s moving up too aggressively, it’s usually unsustainable. That’s why parabolic runs tend to end with painful crashes—what goes up too fast typically comes down even faster.
If your trendline is forming an angle sharper than 45 degrees , be careful. Sustainable trends don’t need a rocket launch trajectory to prove their strength.
🌊 One Chart, One Trendline (or Two)—Not Ten
Some traders draw so many trendlines that their charts get lost under the weight of too many lines. If you need to squint to see price action through the mess of lines, you’re doing too much.
Here’s a golden rule in drawing trendlines: less is more. Trendlines should highlight key structures, not overwhelm you with information. If you find yourself drawing trendlines at every minor high and low, take a step back. A clean chart is a tradable chart and one or two trendlines are usually enough to help uncover price direction.
🚩 Breakouts Aren’t Always Breakouts
One of the biggest mistakes traders make is assuming that when the price breaks a trendline, it’s an instant reversal signal. It’s not.
Markets (or well-trained algos) love to fake out emotional traders. Just because price dips below your uptrend line doesn’t mean the trend is over—it could just be a temporary pullback or liquidity grab (stop-loss hunting?) before continuing in the original direction.
Always wait for confirmation. A proper breakout should come with:
Increased volume (to validate the move)
Retest of the broken trendline (flipping from support to resistance, or vice versa)
Clear follow-through (not just a single candle wick that breaks and snaps back)
The market loves tricking traders into premature entries or exits. Don’t fall for it—instead, use some technical backup like looking for a double top, a head and shoulders or some other popular chart pattern .
☝️ The Only Trendline That Matters? The One The Market Respects
At the end of the day, trendlines are just tools—guides to help you structure price action. They’re not magical indicators. They don’t necessarily predict the future. They simply help visualize market tendencies.
If price constantly breaks through your trendline and ignores it, guess what? It’s not a valid trendline. The best traders don’t force a narrative—they adjust their view based on what the price is actually doing.
So next time you find yourself drawing, adjusting, or forcing trendlines into existence, ask yourself: Am I analyzing the market, or just trying to make myself feel better? Because the market isn’t wrong—so better check your trendlines twice.
Now off to you—are you using trendlines in your charts and do you wait for the third point to connect before moving in? Share your experience in the comment section!
