Best days to trade

Hi all

I remember somewhere in the babypips school there was a suggestion that perhaps (in at least some traders opinions) Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were better days to trade than Mondays and Fridays. I was wondering what some of our members thought about this. I would imagine a lot would depend on what sort of trader you are. As I guess many people are pushing for a slightly higher % of winning trades then this could be significant. Thoughts please :slight_smile:

Hi Michael, I haven’t seen that in the School pages, but I strongly agree with it.

From my perspective as an intraday trader (my trades are open for anything from 5 minutes to 5 hours, but the average is [I]far[/I] nearer the former), analysing my spot forex trades over a 2-year period showed me that - to my slight surprise - 90% of my trades were collectively made between Tuesday and Thursday, with Mondays and Fridays accounting for only about 5% each.

(Since switching from spot forex to futures, so that I can use volume considerations as an additional trading parameter, my figures - of which I have only 8 months-worth, so far - are similarly slanted, but not as extreme.)

Hey there,

I also would agree that Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are the most consistent days to trade. On Mondays the market is still trying to find it’s feet from all the weekend shenanigans, however, some of my best results have been on Mondays where trades have finally materialised with a bit of speed.

Obviously bank holidays are a bit of a no no - with low liquidity comes erratic moves, these may seem appealing due to greater volatility but will kill your account and moral eventually.

I have also found the days you mention best to trade. I avoid trading on fridays unless I can identify a setup I expect to be out of by UK lunchtime.

Same here …

I look less and less on Mondays and Fridays, especially if I have anything else to do (and I try to arrange other necessary things to be done for Mondays and Fridays, if I can, in an attempt to minimise “the opportunity-cost of everyday life”).

I trade on all those days and on all those pairs where I find a setup according to my strategy. I don’t think any day is good or bad for trading, just trade according to your plan and keep patience.

obviously best days are for trading when I got best profits. It is not fix which day will become good , depend on market and your trading perceptions you will get maximum profit that make you happy to have a best day of trading . I get once or twice in a month very good profits.

if you know what you are doing, everyday is the BEST day to trade…

I think the market is most active during those days and I generally trade the most during that period. However, one shouldn’t discount trading during Mondays and Fridays completely. If there’s a good opportunity to trade I wouldn’t refrain making use of it just because it’s Monday.

I think Clint posted extensively also on best trading times. .do a search for his name and this topic …

Indeed Friday NFPs can kickstart late-week trends or rallies, for example.

Going to have to agree/disagree with this statement. First, let’s clarify that “best” days to trade is largely an intraday traders problem only. Swing or long-term strategies need not worry. If your strategy says enter you enter, simple as that.

But as an intraday trader, one knows that every day is a good day to trade, it’s all about timing. So the question is better of put not what is the best day to trade but what is the best hour.

That is going to come down to your own system and your own research. After all, a day trader’s job is to find evidence of past price action that yield positive results then apply that knowledge to their trading plan. That, is no simple exercise in itself.

Take my own work. Just recently I was introduced to a technique known as Binary Rule-Based Approximation. This technique has allowed me to identify 216 different box pattern formations that I work with. Researching and testing these patterns is a long-term project and I’m just starting my exploration. However to demonstrate the above I have extracted the below data.

So using just 1 single pattern, tested against tick data obtained from Dukascopy, using Birt’s Tickdata suite with slippage and variable spread (slippage set at 80% chance of negative slippage up to 1 pip, 20% at positive slippage up to 0.5 pips at entry, 60/40 of up to 0.5 pips on exit) over a 26 month period I came up with the following results.


No good what-so-ever. But if I apply a simple time of day/day of week filter I can obtain the following results


All of a sudden my unprofitable pattern has become highly lucrative. Just by trading the right hour on the right day. But, it’s all theory. And not tested in a live environment yet.

That’s next and all part of the process. A process that occurs at my pace. But I have got a bot up and running testing in a small, real account. I have linked it to myfxbook but the test only started yesterday so nothing to report on. Won’t hijack this thread but will update my own when the time is right.

To put it simply, every day you see a good signal to open a trade is a good day to trade. In the end that’s what matters the most, I think.

i mostly swing, and i just look for good position in the charts to start a trade, there is no good nor bad days to trade for me, its the timing really. the art of letting go of a bad outcomes is a must!

I don’t think so that there are any best day to trade as no one can predict the fluctuation of Forex Market. We need to trade daily to becoming successful.

Here is a some unbiased results (i.e. I don’t trade based on fundamental, technical or quantitative data):


I find Tuesday best day for trading . Monday is good but some times trend is not clear that to which side market will go after weekends. Next day we know markets ups and downs on the basis of First day movement.

I prefer long-time trades, so there are no best days for me. For the intraday traders, of course, there is sence to trade on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. But sometimes you can meet good signals on other days too.

My opinion is that the best time for trading is:

  • When we have intersection of two sessions – European and Asian, European and American sessions,
  • The European session - the most volatile,
  • Tuesday and Wednesday – days when normally most intense movement is observed.

I think Wednesday and Thursdays are the best days to work with EUR/USD. I get the most profit these days. And what about other pairs?
I saw the comparing table on Babypips already. It’s interesting waht will other traders say.