Forex Trading Dedication
March 21, 2007 by Trader Rich
Is my forex trading dedication waning, are my priorities shifting, or have I come to
a realistic conclusion? I'm talking about the time I actually spend sitting at
my computer trading. There was a time
when I was getting up way before the crack of dawn trying to trade the European
session at 4 a.m. EST. I also used to
watch the charts closely during the Japanese session. Those times are over though. The time I actually sitting in front of
charts has lessened by the month at this point and I'm not sure that's such a
good thing for someone at my stage of learning.
I get a lot of emails like, "why don't you do this or why don't you
do that" but the reality is that I just can't do most of those things. Some of these "things" are trading
the news and trading shorter-term charts.
I certainly appreciate the feedback but can someone with a limited
amount of time actually be a trader? I'm not sure but maybe I'm taking the
wrong approach to all of this. Maybe
someone short on time shouldn't be trading short-term charts or trade news
releases. Maybe I shouldn't even think
about day trading.
I've been trading a daytrading system for a while now mainly because it was a set and forget system. I could set my orders, stop losses, and
profit targets and wake up most of the time to find the trade already complete but this certainly doesn't give you any flexibility. Particularly, I'd find it very difficult to implement a breakeven requirement to my trading plan unless I automate this via a Metatrader broker. So do I have to give up trading 30-minute and 60-minute charts and move toward 4-hour, daily, or weekly? Perhaps I will have to do that.
How are all of you managing to day trade and work full-time for a living?
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I barely look at charts these days - I’d say 90% of my effort over the past year has been put into designing a trading system, and now that it’s at a point I’m satisfied with it (for the time being at least) I only spend 15 minutes or so dealing with actual trading each day. My trades are all set-and-forget (or fire-and-forget as I call them) and once I run the numbers and place an order I can pretty much ignore them for the next 24 hours. I used to do more intraday trading on 5-minute charts but it just wore me down and emptied my account, so 24 hours is the shortest period I trade these days. It’s much better for my mental health
Hi Rich,
If you don’t have the time for daytrading, better is to trade bigger timeframe’s such as the 4hour or daily’s, I think you have no other option on this.
All my best,
Wim
I agree with Adam, Read the James16 thread again and give it a whirl on demo. Can’t hurt right?
One way is possible: trade london session. U have to wake up 30 minutes before london opens, watch the action, make a trade, attach trailing stop and go back to bad. Major move (eur/usd) “happens” between 1:30 and 2:30 am est.
This is the first day I met your side.I congratulate you can prepare this side while trading. I also estimate a live side but i can not dare:)
I feel what your trouble is just a phase of beeing a trader. One should be in the market if he(she)trades or not. If he has positions or not. There will be time one can be confortable with using his(her) daily time as when to trade, to observe, to study, to sleep, and enjoy. Traders daily self-programing should be one of the main task or a phase of him beeing a trader. Then the time may come to trade within a flexibility when and how to trade in any time frame related more to the other conditions as technicals, money managment etc.
spent 1 year of randomly trading watch charts 24/7 and trading heaps of systems and giving up after a string of losses then sat there and backtested a system with 6 yrs of data and forward tested it 9 months and now i trade 3-5 hrs a day in a fixed time period watching 4 charts I could not care what anything currency in the world except the gbp/usd is doing now nor do i ever open their charts..
life hasnt been better.. still have disclipline issues following my system but that is another matter
Rich it’s not about the number of “things” you do, but rather about those that you do well and can improve on.
The last two postings (Do One Thing Right & Trade Less) on Rob Booker’s blog(piptopia.com) are relevant in this case
I trade the 4 hour charts, I check the charts on every candle open (except the ones that happen in the middle of the night). If I’m at work I RDP into my trading machine, only takes 10min, things are much less mentally toxic at higher timeframes, I could not imagine anything worse that sitting in front of a 15min GBP/USD feed all night.
Reactive-corrective, fully automatic trading…state of the art, revolutionary, no bu||$h|t.
My suggestion would be to pick a time-frame that you can commit to watching the charts for 2hours minimum…the find a currency pair that gets some action within that time frame…and forget about everything else (as someone else mentioned above). Focus on one thing and do it well!
Hope all goes well for you. (I’m up 10.72% in the last four weeks).