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What is meant when said “A market is trending”

Prices are drifting upward or downward in a reasonably regular manner.As opposed to "range trading" which means that prices move upward until they get around the top of the range, at which time they hang around for a while, and then go down until they get to the bottom of the range, at which time they bounce around a bit until they go up to the top...

Prices are drifting upward or downward in a reasonably regular manner.As opposed to "range trading" which means that prices move upward until they get around the top of the range, at which time they hang around for a while, and then go down until they get to the bottom of the range, at which time they bounce around a bit until they go up to the top...

I'm going to disagree with Pat a little bit. In practice, a market which is trending is one where you expect the range to increase, rather than stay the same or decrease.A trending market is not a market where you see a straight line from the bottom left of your screen, to the top right of your screen. A trending market is a market where a range expansion, is expected to be followed by a further range expansion.In theory, a trending market is a system where the total complexity is less than the number of moving parts. Consider a traffic light. There may be 100 cars. But first you're going to get a clump of 30 going one way. Then you're going to get a clump of 30 going another way. So despite the possibility for all the cars to stop and start and drive in circles at random, there's just not as much going on as there could be. There's nothing new. All the cars are influenced by the same factors. Similarly, separate buyers on different days in an uptrend, are influenced by the same, persistent factors.