Trading from the U.S. Please post comments

I wanted to start this thread so new pippers like me (which are still demo trading) can post comments on market hours. Is quiet obvious that good movements happen when most americans are asleep, but if you’ve gone thru the babypips lesson on market hours it states that when more than one market is open, there is more volume, therefore there is more chances for price movement. What is your experience? Is it possible to catch good trades early in the US morning and may be in the evening as well? Are traders living under GMT time or close more sucessfull than U.S. traders on intraday trading? Your comments would be of great help to me and I’m sure to many others as well.

Thank you

OK. I’ll bite. I am presently GMT -5.

I am so fortunate that I have the luxury of setting my own hours and can trade at any time. Here’s the thing… I concentrate on US equities and index futures. In forex, the vast majority of my actionable ideas are generated on 4H or longer TF’s. Stock trades are similar. I try to manage the trade using the same TF in which it was generated.

IMO, Once you figure out that scalping and day trading is far more work and stress than is necessary, market hours are almost a non-factor.

I can’t argue with that. No doubt it is more work to day trade, but I would add that many of us starting out can’t handle the greater capital at risk for a larger time frame.

I’ve been demo trading in LA for about a year and my hours are the worst for trading Forex. Like the person who started this thread, I would love to trade the London market, but sorry I have a day job and am sleeping. Luckily, my day job still allows me to trade during the day. I trade NY session pairs between 9am-12pm and have recently thought about extending this to 1pm as there appears to be enough volatility until then most of the time. I then take up Tokyo session pairs like USD/JPY and AUD/USD at 4pm - 6pm and I have had fairly good luck with these. I haven’t traded very much from 6pm-10pm. The times I did have been mixed. From what I can see, if someone knows what they’re doing (not me), they should range from 10-20 pips and mostly 10 during the 9am-12pm and 4pm-6pm blocks. Forget about 50 pips though.

You know, the more I trade, the more I think Toptick is right. I tried switching to daily charts and my profit took a huge jump forward. And, it does make time frames less meaningful. If you set your trade properly, the stop is really there to curb a disaster anyway. So, while I need a wider stop to cover the volatility, I actually feel safer trading with a daily chart then with a 15 minute. Also, you get to take advantage of the carry trade and collect some interest.

thanks for starting this tread

Daily Charts tell you all you need. Real biases in forex markets are only detectable over many days or weeks or months. An arbitrager on acid doesn’t even look at the ups and downs of individual days:


He/she doesn’t even need the candles at all:


The open, the close, which came first, none of that matters. Only two prices matter for any given day: the low and the high. Using DMT on an MDMA with PSILOCYBIN, an arbitrager on acid can profitably trade with that information alone.

TopTick07 is right. You can set your trading hours. Although time zones matter, but that does not mean you cannot get up the middle of the night or early morning to execute a trade. To want to make more pips, I think that is a challenge any trader will be willing to take.