Trend following is an investment strategy which tries to take advantage of long, medium and short-term moves that seem to play out in various markets. The strategy aims to work on the market trend mechanism and take benefit from both sides of the market, enjoying the profits from the ups and downs of the stock or futures markets. Traders who use this approach can use current market price calculation, moving averages and channel breakouts to determine the general direction of the market and to generate trade signals (Forex Signals). Traders who employ a trend following strategy do not aim to forecast or predict specific price levels; they simply jump on the trend and ride it. Due to the different techniques and time frames employed by trend followers to identify trends, trend followers as a group are not always correlated to one another.

Trend following is most commonly associated with Commodity Trading Advisors as the predominant strategy of technical traders. Dr. Galen Burghardt, an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, researched the relative impact of trend following funds in the CTA business. By tracking a subset of trend following CTAs and comparing that subset them with a broader CTA index (from the period 2000-2009), Dr. Burghardt measured a correlation of .97 between the two groups, showing how large the impact of trend following is in the CTA business.

Edward Arthur Seykota (born August 7, 1946) is a commodities trader, who earned S.B. degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT and Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management, both in 1969. In 1970 he pioneered Systems trading by using early punched card computers to test ideas on trading the markets. Seykota resides in Incline Village-Crystal Bay, Nevada, on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.

As a young man he attended high school near The Hague, Netherlands and also lived in Voorburg.

Seykota is a trader who in 1970 pioneered a computerized trading system (now known as System trading) for the futures market for the brokerage house he and Michael Marcus were working for. Later, he decided to venture out on his own and manage a few of his client's accounts.

Much of Seykota's success was attributed to his development and utilization of computerized trading systems to which he first tested on a mainframe IBM computer. Later on, the brokerage house he had been working for adopted his system for their trades.

Michael Covel is an author and film director. In 1996, he co-founded the website TurtleTrader.com, an online resource for trend following writing, news, and information. Covel’s first book was 'Trend Following: How Great Traders Make Millions in Up or Down Markets' (FT Press, April 2004, Nov. 2005, Mar. 2007, Mar. 2009) featuring traders David Harding (mathematician), John W. Henry, Ed Seykota, Richard Donchian, Jesse Lauriston Livermore and Larry Hite among others. His second book, 'The Complete TurtleTrader: The Legend, the Lessons, the Results' (Collins, Oct. 2007, Feb. 2009) chronicles a trading experiment by legendary trader Richard Dennis. His third book is 'Trend Commandments: Trading for Exceptional Returns' (FT Press, June 24, 2011). His fourth book is 'The Little Book of Trading: Trend Following Strategy for Big Winnings' (Wiley, August 9, 2011).

Michael Wesley Covel was born September 1, 1968 in Quantico, Virginia. Covel graduated with a B.A. from George Mason University (Fairfax, Virginia). He received a M.B.A. at Florida State University (Tallahassee, Florida).

Gerald Celente (born November 29, 1946) is an American trend forecaster, publisher of the Trends Journal, business consultant and author who makes predictions about the global financial markets and other events of historical importance. Celente has described himself as a "political atheist" and "citizen of the world". He has appeared as a guest on television news shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS Morning News, The Glenn Beck Show, NBC Nightly News, The Alex Jones Show and Russia Today.

Celente was born in The Bronx, New York City, New York. He had early political experience running a mayoral campaign in Yonkers, New York and served as executive assistant to the secretary of the New York State Senate, which Celente called the worst job he ever had. From 1973 to 1979 Celente traveled between Chicago and Washington D.C. as a government affairs specialist. In 1980 Celente founded The Trends Research Institute (at first called the Socio-Economic Research Institute of America), now located in Kingston, New York, publisher of the Trends Journal which forecasts and analyzes business, socioeconomic, political, and other trends.