I’m looking for perspective as to What & When to trade.
Would love to get as many viewpoints here as possible, so if you’d like to share the story of what works for you - please do!
Anyway - Being a noob I feel pretty good about the following decision points.
I plan on focusing on one currency pair.
I plan choosing one with USD in there as I’m most familiar with it.
That being the case it seems to me that the NY session would be a good time to trade as it has some overlap with the London session, and is clearly relevant to the USD.
BUT…
I live in the Eastern Time Zone (USA), and have a “real job” - during which I won’t be able to focus on trading. So maybe that’s not best time/session to trade?
If I did try to trade that session - Ideally I’ll find a way to either evaluate and setup trade’s entry/stops/exist prior to the NY open and just walk way from it secure in the knowing that everything is in place and it’s in the market’s hands now.
(To be safe and realistic I just have to assume my job will keep me busy from 8a-5p).
Or I could try and get up at some weird time and trade during some other session. Which begs the question… If I do that should I also trade some non USD pair?
So…
How do all of you that have day jobs trade around them?
I trade around a ‘real job’ and as i work 8a-6p in england i find that i can trade more pairs by setting them up in the evening. Spend one hour doing your research and your smiling. (plus its nice to wake up to a nice little profit in the morning)
Best suggestion…try different times and see what works best for you
You’re instinct is to trade the last half of London session?
So would EUR/USR or GBP/USD be good candidates to focus on?
Does it matter?
And thebigreddog you said …
So it sounds like you do your trading in the evening. I’m a bit of a night owl by nature so that sure sounds good. So that’s the NY session right? And your trade are likely effected by / happen in the Sydney session? Is that right?
Do you put anything in place to ensure that your trades could only trigger in a certain time range? Given that you span sessions - do you give any particular currency pair more attention?
well for me the NY session is running while im trading so the time is right for me to trade USD. My main focus is on USD, AUD and Euro. Still trade the USD and base the trades on what you think will happen the nest day.
I’m on Eastern time and also have a fulltime job. I’m trading EURUSD from 5am-7am (I wake up at 4:30 to do initial prep work). This is working really well, I’m very happy with the level of liquidity/movement I’ve seen.
I read somewhere that this is considered overlap between London and New York, and is one of the best times (for liquidity) to trade.
I would have to agree with purplepatch on this one. Your best bet is to trade before work and possibly trade the London open. I will warn you though it will take extreme discipline to wake up so early every morning. You will have to want it bad and willing to make these types of sacrifices. If you do the end result will be success and freedom from your JOB. BTW I think GBP/USD is the perfect pair for this session and there are tons of different trading opportunity’s. I trade a breakout system and also my discretionary price action trading is almost 100% exclusively gbp/usd and it makes me plenty of pips.
Yeah, my thought was that I would do all of my detective work and then place an entry order, a stop loss order, and a profit taking exit order - all at once. Then I’d be free to let the trade happen.
Isn’t the New York open 8a EST?
Either way it’s great to hear that the 5-7 time slot is working for you… That’s one of the morning slots that may actually work for me.
Thanks johnnykanoo!
Leaving the J.O.B. Sure sounds nice.
The biggest discipline is going to be needed While I’m trading at odd hours on a demo account! (I hope to be doing a month long dress rehersall in February)
I guess my hesitation with doing the 3am slot is that I’ll have to be out before the NY session starts anyway. so I’ll miss all the cool overlap. That being the case does it matter THAT much as compared to doing the evening shift?
I’ll do what it takes but want to make sure I’m getting the best bang for my buck so to speak. My brain generally works better later.
I don’t mean to hijack this thread but am asking for a little advice.
I trade from the UK in the evenings 6-11pm, and possibly morning 6am-7am and currently trade Eur/Gbp. Please could anyone confirm if Eur/Usd and Gbp / Usd be good for these times? and which would suit which.
Definitely true there. Last month the EurUsd would drop like a rock at the NY open and then do a steady climb the remainder of the day. It was almost clockwork and if you missed that steep decline, you pretty much just missed out.
There is so much to think about when you start playing this currency game. I am definitely a noob at it still. One thing I am learning is, how to spot trends. Once you got a line on one and you see a recurring setup. You can setup pending orders that have your stops and limits preset. I still have yet to learn EA’s but, once you have that figured out. I am sure you can just take an hour or so in the evening, check out pending news, review your charts, look at the candles and then set your trades up for the following day and just let it do its thing. If you get in great, if you make on it even better. Hopefully you have stops in that you can live with and there you go.
