Frequency of trades

Hi,

And almost a very happy new year to all.

I have a few questions for you all.

How frequently do you place trades, everyday, every week etc?

Also i`m in full time work and do sometimes find it difficult to monitor my charts, how many of you are trading full time and making a living out of it?

I`ve always been advised to keep a second income as it reduces the PRESSURE of trading. Any advise?

Well when 2007 roles along I will be trading full time. Not necessary will I be bringing home the bacon but I will be committing at least 9 hours a day to study and placing trades. I think you should place as many trades as your trading method insists. If you have an entry then take it.

Personally I see myself taking no more then 1-2 trades a day if I am lucky. There are some days I probably won’t take a trade at all.

About the pressure thing I am not sure if there would be pressure. If you are making more then what you need then the only pressure you have is the bare minimum you need to survive. And hopefully that bare minimum will be only a fraction of what your goals are and easily achievable.

Perhaps given your situation you should build up capital for your trading account so when you are ready to trade you can make some significant extra doe by trading once and awhile.

By no means am I imply trading is a hobby. But my best advice would be for you to save up capital for your trading account so maybe down the road when you are ready you will have more capital to play with.

I think how many trades you place in any given day or week is largely decided by the type of trader you are. In other words, if you are a day trader and trade off of 5 minute charts, then you might be making several trades per day. If you are a swing trader it might be a couple of trades a week, a position or long-term trader maybe a trade once a month or less. So it really is a difficult question to answer because we don’t know what kind of trader you are.

I think you can make a living off of any style of trading. As your trading time frame increases, so do your profit targets, so it’s somewhat all relative. In the end you have to decide what style fits your comfort level and personality. babypips.com is a great reference point to review all these things.

But swordfue is absolutley right in saying that you need to build up capital to trade for a living with as little stress as possible. When you are at a point where you can risk less than 1 or 2% per trade and easily make a living, then that should help with the stress.

Keeping a second job is always an option, too. Depending on your own personality, the second you start relying on trading for your bread and butter there is a new type of stress that could kick in. The stress of knowing that not only do you have to use trading profits to make a living and pay expenses, but now you have the added pressure of having to come up with an even higher return to grow your account and not have it stagnate while you withdraw to pay for life. Take an inventory of all your expenses and then add a reasonable growth rate to the account and ask yourself if your system of choice stacks up well enough while risking 1 or 2% per trade.

Taking a longer term approach to trading so you don’t have to rely on it while having a second job can help for sure. It all depends on you. The only ABSOLUTE fact you need to be aware of is that you need sufficient capital to help your account provide you with as much as possible with the least amount of stress. Given my own expenses and lifestyle and risk tolerance, i could not imagine trading for a living with anything less than 100K.

This is exact what i think!Salute you for those words.I will add that you have tend increase you profits trought increse your capital and decrise your risk by me this is only way to be a profitable.I just want to be a bank :slight_smile: .

Best regards

Vladimir.

I shouldn’t even answer your question since I am like you. I have a FT job and I have never traded with real $$ yet but I find it hard to hold back my opinion :slight_smile: . My opinion, like shordofure, is that you should trade everytime your system tells you to trade, assuming there is no news that can blow you out of the water while your boss is [B]pi**ing[/B] you off. Also, like BigPippin suggest you should concentrate on just consistently making pips and not care how many. I usually look at all my multiple time frames, daily/4hrs/1hr and I make my trade on my 15 min chart assuming there is no news that day and I hope for the best. From my months of demo trading I found that I could be trailing my stops and make a better profit if I was watching than not watching at all. On another note, some big moves that I made 80pips+ would have been stopped out if I was trailing my stops so it can help & hurt you to trail your stops to close. I am currently trying to find the middle ground on when to trail my stops or set it to breakeven. I am also considering trading multiple lots like many here have suggested but I think you need to be watching the market to close out half of them when your up so many pips and move your stop to BE for the other lots. Good Luck to you!

The number of traders you open is the number of signals or entries your system gives.

but sure it depends on the nature of your trading style and your system.

If you have another job, I suggest that you trade swing setups, this will keep you looking at charts once a day at least for 10 minutes and set you trades as your system suggests.

Ofcourse if you trade full time, using intraday charts is better.
But you must find, do you have the patience to look at charts too long?

I suggest that you keep your second job until you are confident to go for a living in Forex. Do not take risk. Forex does not suit many people, make sure you can trade forex. Once you are confident, trade forex full time.