The Pullback That FOOLS Most TradersDow Jones 30BLACKBULL:US30Akil_StokesOne of the simplest ways I teach traders to identify a trend is to look at the direction of price. If price is moving from the bottom-left to the top-right, you're looking at a bullish trend. Simple. And sometimes keeping things simple is exactly what we need because the more we learn about trading, the easier it becomes to overcomplicate what we're seeing. From a more rules-based perspective, we're also still in a bullish continuation state because price has broken and closed above previous structure highs. But here's where things get interesting… Bullish trends don't move straight up. They extend, they pull back, and then they can extend again. So if you're looking to participate in the next move higher, you don't necessarily want to chase price at the highs. You want to know where that pullback could potentially take you. And I have a couple of levels on my radar. The first is a retest of the previous structure high. But there's another area that's particularly interesting to me. If we drop down to the 4-hour chart, we can see that the market may be developing what we call a complex pullback. And this is something a lot of traders misunderstand. They know that markets pull back. What they don't always realize is that a pullback doesn't have to happen in one clean move. Sometimes the market takes a longer, more complicated route before continuing in the original direction. That's what I'm watching for here. And when I measure the potential pullback, something interesting happens. We have an AB=CD / 1:1 measured move lining up with a 1.618 Fibonacci extension — right inside the larger area of interest. That's multiple pieces of information pointing toward the same zone. So if the Dow gives us more downside at the beginning of the week, I'm not immediately thinking: “The bullish trend is over.” I'm thinking: “Is this simply a deeper pullback creating a better buying opportunity?” As far as targets go, the first obvious objective is a retest of the previous highs. But because we're dealing with an index that's still in a strong bullish trend, I wouldn't necessarily be in a hurry to exit everything there. If the trend continues, I'd rather give a portion of the position room to run and see just how far that train can go. The key is recognizing the difference between a trend reversal and a pullback that simply looks scary. And right now, the Dow is giving us a reason to pay very close attention to that distinction. If you have any questions, comments or want to share you views, please do so below. And I hope you have both a safe and profitable week of trading! Akil