The ADX indicator can be a useful tool when it comes to gauging whether a particular trend is worth following in terms of investments. The indicator was created back in 1978, and the letters stand for the Average Directional Movement Index.
Most people are familiar with trends and how they can influence our need to buy something. If a particular fashion look is trendy, more people are liable to buy it. But every trend is only likely to last for a particular time. This means those fashionable slacks you have may not be so trendy next year, so you’d likely ditch them before then.
Spotting trends
The same thing applies in terms of the ADX stock indicator. It allows you to see whether a trend is weak or strong, and you can thus gauge whether to buy or sell your investments – in the forex market for example – as a result.
Generally speaking if you see an ADX value that drops below about 20, you can consider that to be a weak trend. The lower it goes the weaker it will be. Conversely if it should go above 40 it will be an indicator of a strong trend.
Which indicator is the most important one to be aware of?
In truth, both ends of the scale are worth looking at. You don’t want to invest in things that have weak trends because they aren’t likely to go anywhere or get you any particularly good results. Of course you can keep an eye on them in case things change, but generally speaking you should ignore them for now.
The interesting ADX indicators are those that start climbing. Some say anything above 25 is worth looking at, so you can see that an indicator measuring 40 is well worth a closer look.
Should you abandon all other methods of choosing stocks?
No – using the ADX stock indicator should form just one part of your overall strategy to find stocks that are worth investing in. If you use the ADX indicator for just one thing, it should be to find the magic number 25 and to see whether the trend is going up or down from there.
This will help you spot the strong trends and avoid the weak ones. A value of 25 that starts going up will be well worth taking a closer look at, for example. If you use this indicator along with a number of other tools, you can narrow down your investment options. Hopefully you will arrive at a far better result than you would have had before.
The ADX stock indicator takes a little getting used to if you have never used it before. As with any other stock picking method, it makes sense to have a few dry runs and to ‘invest’ in chosen stocks in a virtual sense first to gauge your success rate. You can then work out whether you want to go ahead and use it more often.
