There is a well known trading slogan, which is "the trend is your friend". But of course the trend depends on the timeframe. For instance, an instrument can be in a up trend on the weekly chart, a sideways trend on the daily chart, a down trend on the 30 minute chart and an up trend on the one minute chart.

The ADX readings for the 7 instruments we track on this site are all currently below 25 (using the standard 14 day setting) and this is often associated with sideways markets.

But moving to a longer timeframe, the situation is different. One of the tools I use to identify trends is a set of three moving averages, and on the weekly charts I use 4 10 and 40 weeks, looking for how the three averages are aligned in respect to each other. The 4 above the 10 above the 40 is defined as an up trend; the 4 below the 10 below the 40 is defined as a down trend; everything else is defined as a sideways market.

On this timeframe using this tool two of the three currency pairs we track are all  sideways markets currently (Sterling Dollar and Euro Dollar) and the third, Dollar Yen, is in a downtrend. Gold, FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and S&P 500 are all in up trends, but all are close to moving into sideways markets since in each case the 4 week moving average is only just keeping its place above the 10 week.