Choppy

A choppy market is when an asset’s price shows no clear trend but instead experiences many smaller fluctuations. 

A choppy market can occur when buyers and sellers of a market are at an equilibrium. If there is high liquidity (large trading volumes) in a market and neither bears nor bulls can dominate, the result is often a choppy market.

Choppy markets are associated with rectangular price ranges. A rectangular price range is a pattern that occurs on charts that continuously hits the same support (the lower limit) and resistance (the upper limit) levels. This prevents the market from breaking out into a trend, as its price is instead confined between these two levels – creating a rectangle.

Traders often look to profit from price trends, so can find it difficult to successfully trade a choppy market. Those who do trade choppy markets to try take advantage of small price movements over a short-term period, but more volatile markets are likely to present greater opportunities for most traders.

What are good technical indicators for choppy markets?

A good technical indicator to use to identify choppy markets is the Average Directional Index (ADX). The ADX indicator will not only help to identify whether a market is experiencing a price trend, but it will also show the strength of the trend.

The main characteristic of a choppy market is that there is little or no trend, so in this case we can use the ADX indicator to identify the strength of a trend in a market. If it indicates there’s no trend, we know a market is choppy and can trade accordingly.