Chris Rowe

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Different analysts have different ideas about the length of each time frame of the three trends. But, basically, trends have three time frames:

1. Short term (days to weeks)
2. Intermediate term (weeks to months)
3. Long term (months to years)

Each one of these trends is a portion of the next bigger trend. For instance, the intermediate-term trend can be a correction in the long-term trend, and a short-term trend can be a correction in the intermediate-term trend.

Here's a two-year chart of the S&P 500 (SPX):

In the example above, the two diagonally ascending red lines show that the long-term trend of the market is up. (It's been a while since we've seen an uptrend like this -- but it's great for illustration purposes.) And while this is a two-year chart, the long-term trend had been up since 2003.

Highlighted in blue is the intermediate-term trend. Notice how it sort of zig-zags toward the top and bottom of the long-term trend's "channel."

Then, within the blue highlighted intermediate-term trend is the short-term trend. I used the green and red vertical lines to highlight some of the short-term up- and downtrends within the intermediate-term trend.