Trading with a full time job just may be impossible

Decide what kind of trader you want to be and see if it feels natural for you.

If you scalp, like Maurizio said, you can get away with trading the quiet hours. But not everyone feels comfortable with scalping and have a hard time managing the reward:risk.

Otherwise, you have to go longer term, especially if your work offers no flexibility to access charts and your platform during the day.

Are you familiar with support and resistance trading? Because the market seems to be more responsive to these price levels on the longer-term charts, it could be something worth exploring for you.

If you feel comfortable with 100% mechanical trading then it could be worthwhile to explore automating a set of very well tested rules. Be careful with mechanical trading though. In my opinion, it can be just as profitable as discretionary trading but mechanical systems a not capable of adapting to market changes. You would just have to know when the performance of such a system is falling outside the statistical norm (based on your backtesting) and have the discipline to make the changes when necessary.

The point is that there are options for every single kind of trader, full or part time. The work and discipline is required to find and test the rules extensively according to your personality and lifestyle. Once again, it has to feel right and unforced. Hope this helps.

pipbull,
could you explain a little about s/r trading, any links?
i have been trying to build my trading templates around that for now, any pointers will be appreciated. :slight_smile:

and, i also have the problem of working and trading…my only free hours is when i want to sleep, and the market is crawling at that time…the asian session. :mad:

Pull up a 240 min chart… that is damn easy… I hardly do any actual daytrading anymore because with forex, hell whats the point of scalping +5 and 10’s for a couple hours each day when I can throw on a couple trades off the 240 min charts, set my s/l’s and targets and go to bed?

Last night I went long the GBPUSD, and EURUSD. Woke up to find my +40 pip target in the GBP hit, and my +90 pip target hit in the EUR. It required all of 2 minutes at midnight to glance at a chart and throw on the trade. I made money while I slept, woke up and gave myself the day off.

Get a broker like oanda that has a web based platform or something if you want to check it or monitor the trades every couple of hours.

Sound strategies should require 0 effort from you once the trade is put on. You should know where your in at and where you’ll be out at for either or loss or a profit. If you know all that before hand and you only can make decisions every 4 hours how much time can it possibly take?

I would like to trade off the daily’s once a day before bed or after work, just set it and forget it, but unfortunately all the systems I have found wait for a signal of some kind and I am never home when this happens. I am in the eastern time zone and get home when the market has flatlined for the day. i guess I may have to figure out if I can take a laptop to work and use their wireless connection.

Trades open for 8 hours without any monitoring?

I don’t like it :eek:

What if you wake up in the morning to find both trade have hit their stop losses?! :eek:

Yeee…uk! :stuck_out_tongue:

It is a distinct possibility, even it you are a “know it all” about trading and you are 100% sure that you are going to make profit because you have done your homework.

The penalty for a prophet who prophecy fails to materialize is stoning! :smiley:

Naw its not easy to work around it…especially if you work full-time. Just imagine working part time with different hours and days every week…it does’nt allow me to be as consistent as I would like to be like I was when I was demo traiding, but the trick is to work around it long enough until you start to get a groove for it.

The key here is to not give up just because you don’t have the advantage of being FT.

Personally, I’m using work to my advantage. If you rly can’t find away to manage it, just focus on adding money to your trade account when you can…

So what if both stop out? Stop outs are a necessary part of this game. If you focus on them you’ve been beat before your got out of the gate. Hopefully, you’ve managed your risk appropriately on those trades and you move on to the next trade setup. Whats the big deal? The only thing you do by checking a trade is creating opportunity for doubt or emotions to affect your trade decisions. You can’t do that if you can’t look at a chart. Micromanaging trades is the worst thing you can do. For example, on my EURUSD trade I put it on at noon yesterday and sat through two separate run downs of -30 pips (I had a 50 pip s/l). Just seeing it made me want to second guess myself, bail on the trade, and run home to mommy.

But I didn’t. I stopped looking at the chart, I accepted the fact that what was going to happen was out of my control, but that the trade was put on at a high probability area, and that my risk and reward was already appropriately managed. It required no input from me. So I walked away and let the charts work. I think far too often traders find themselves micromanaging trades… If your trade setup is on a 240 minute chart sometimes it takes days for a tradeable pattern to appear, why then would I expect that I need to manage my trade every 8 hours, or even 4, or 1? Should I not expect the outcome of the trade to take roughly as long to play out as it did to set up?

Thus, we can deduct that us checking our position twice an hour is nothing but a fruitless exercise that will do nothing more than create indecision, doubt, and reduce our profit.

+301 pips 6 days into the month speaks for itself. Don’t micromanage guys, if you are a real trader you should trust your methodology enough that you should not need to constantly monitor your trades (at least on that time frame). Daytrading for +5-10’s is a whole different ball game, but the same principals still apply. Know the probable outcomes before your place the trade and don’t second guess your decisions once the trade is on. Accept the outcome of the situation you willingly put yourself into.

[/novel]

Cheers!

I agree with daedalus, and have experienced the same thing.

My biggest problem is continuously monitoring the charts. When I see things going against me, I get a sinking feeling, start to panic, and want to exit early. In fact, I HAVE exited early because of panic, only to see things turn around again and go through my previous TP. :frowning:

Of course, it depends on your strategy and time frame, but for a 4 hour chart or higher, I believe that daedalus is exactly right – set your SL & TP and let it ride. What happens happens. You can’t avoid losses, but you can limit them – hence the SL.

As we all know, if your money management is good, you can have more losing trades than winning ones and still come out on top.

Personally, I don’t like to have to sit at my computer all day or constantly be near it so I can check the charts. I like the “set it and forget it” method. It gives me much more freedom to do the things that I have/want to do. You just have to make sure you know what you’re doing before trading that way, which means having a plan and sticking to it.

Terry

For example, on my EURUSD trade I put it on at noon yesterday and sat through two separate run downs of -30 pips (I had a 50 pip s/l). Just seeing it made me want to second guess myself, bail on the trade, and run home to mommy.

It required all of 2 minutes at midnight to glance at a chart and throw on the trade. I made money while I slept, woke up and gave myself the day off

Just wondering if these two statements contradict each other?

It also only took you 2 mins?

I certainly will need to look around for this “system” this is
truly the “holy grail”

I doubled down on the EURUSD price and lowered my average entry buy buying in once to guarantee my entry if it ran away and again when it lowered to a secondary support level.

I just trade Fib Retracements man… its no holy grail but i’ll be damned if it doesn’t make a crap ton of pips.

Cheers!

I just trade Fib Retracements

Well that says it all, thanks daedalus.

I learned that the only ting stopping most people from making money in these markets is patience. IT IS by far, the hardest skill to manage in my opinion of all the components that make up a traders psychology.

All it takes rly is one good trade (b/c you knew you were patient letting it do what it will do) to see how effective this skill can help you. It’s harder to understand if you’ve never actually experienced what it’s like to win when your patient, until you force yourself away from the screen and limit looking at the screens to no more then 2 times a day on the 4H and Daily time frames.

This of course, doesn’t gaurentee you a win, but it sure as hell eliminates alot of anxiety you may feel when you see the trade go against you. Then, you will be tempted to close out early for a smaller potential lose. You rly just have to allow the trade to work in your favor all the way to the end, and this is accomplished if you don’t over-analyze.

But other then that foks, trading is easy, it does NOT have to be stressfull, and it can be quite amusing to wacth money grow in your account you previously didn’t have before. No matter what that amount may be

Sarcasm? :confused:

I just trade Fib Retracements

Well that says it all, thanks daedalus.

Sarcasm?

You can interpret the statement anyway you wish.

Hey, if it works for me it works for me. Theres nothing elaborate or complicated about them, they allow for easy risk managment and high probability setups. K.I.S.S.

No need for negativity in here. Lets keep the discussion positive and insightful, its the only way any of us are going to learn from one another.

Well when I posted this I never thought it would turn into such a good discussion. Keep it rollin.

This was the original OPs question

I have been trying to figure out if I could trade after work on the weekdays but have found that the market doesn’t wait for me. I have no idea how people with a full time job could possibly implement any of the forex strategies I have read about. Even on swing trading or longer trading you are waiting for a signal. I am never watching the market it seems when that signal comes. Either most of the people on this site are trading on the bosses time or they know a secret I don’t. Someone please fill me in. Otherwise I guess I will just work all day and trade all night, I should be able to function on 15 minutes of sleep a day.

This was your answer.

Pull up a 240 min chart… that is damn easy… I hardly do any actual daytrading anymore because with forex, hell whats the point of scalping +5 and 10’s for a couple hours each day when I can throw on a couple trades off the 240 min charts, set my s/l’s and targets and go to bed?

Last night I went long the GBPUSD, and EURUSD. Woke up to find my +40 pip target in the GBP hit, and my +90 pip target hit in the EUR. It required all of 2 minutes at midnight to glance at a chart and throw on the trade. I made money while I slept, woke up and gave myself the day off.

Also

its the only way any of us are going to learn from one another.

So what was it I was supposed to have learned from your post?

No need for negativity in here.

No negativity here, just reality. Also no need to get defensive man.

Yes it has been an interesting exchange and reinforces that there are infinite ways to skin the proverbial cat and finding what suits your psychology, time and account size is the real challenge

I’ve tried to use Fibs but could not quite figure out what to do.

I’d be interested in hearing exactly what you do, if you don’t mind sharing.

Terry

To Daedalus :

Sorry about the late reply.
My main income is sharetrading and now, with an election coming up in this country, I am being highly paid to help a candidate win a seat in parliament.
This, plus helping our indigenous young people keeps me busy - as well as forex.

So, now the reply to your unduly long post : :mad:

Micromanaging trades is the worst thing you can do.

I flatly disagree - but with conditions :

I do agree that once you have set your parameters, you can leave the trade to consummate.

But I like to watch a football match, and with scalping (which I do), it is very exciting to watch a winner in the short time it takes me to trade.

Now, in a 4 hour trade, such a thing would weary you - and I understand.

Secondly, I monitor my trades to check and keep revising my method. If you have made 10 losing trades in a row, [U]you too [/U]will monitor you trades more closely. I guarantee it! :smiley:

+301 pips 6 days into the month speaks for itself

With all due respect, do I note a tone of overconfidence, even arrogance here? :eek:
I could be wrong - you may be a veteran trader of minimum 10 years experience. Then I should take notice - but even so, I would submit that some humility would go down very well.

Lets see how you go 6 months down the track.

Finally, please be careful about rubbishing the master members of this forum. Daydreamer65 has made very valuable contributions and I am indebted to him.

I take this opportunity to openly acknowledge and thank the mighty contributions of the long term members for helping me. Members, such as…Pipbull, Topchess, Rhodytrader, Ramrocket, Basooko, Tonymand, Daydreamer65, Tess, Pipgod, Certicex, Elang, James and many others whoose names fail to come to immediate mind.

Good trading to you all.