A choppy (or "range-bound") market has no persistent trend. Price oscillates within a band, making short-lived moves in both directions without ever committing to a sustained direction. It's arguably the hardest regime for most retail strategies, because it specifically punishes trend-following: every breakout attempt looks like the start of a trend and then reverses, generating a string of small losses (a "whipsaw").
Mean-reversion strategies are built for exactly this regime. Buying dips and selling rips inside a defined range is a losing idea in a strong trend, but can be a genuine edge when price is oscillating around a stable mean.
Indicators like ADX exist specifically to help tell a choppy market apart from a trending one before committing capital to a trend-following signal, since the same moving-average crossover that works beautifully in a trend is a chop-bleeding machine in a range.
Educational content, not investment advice. zengtrade is paper-first and non-custodial.