How much time do you spend on your screens?

Hi all,
I wanted to gather some insight as to the difference between other newbie’s like myself and more experienced profitable traders.
I suspect that us new guys and girls spend too much time on the screens than we have to and I speak for myself often end up messing up what could have been successful trades due to not giving them enough time to materialise.

Too long! We all do, don’t we? :8:

I haven’t found an answer to this “problem”. I know some people advise to take a ten-minute break away from the screen every hour or hour-and-a-half, but I’d find that super-inconvenient, myself. I have to await my trading set-ups patiently, and trading from M5 charts (and especially from their volumetric average equivalents!) it isn’t really easy to take “breaks”.

For me this is a fairly easy question - it depends of the timeframe that I am trading and my expectations from the trade. Most of my trades are on 5m to 1H timeframes.

Almost by definition a 5m to 15m trade is very short term and I usually watch them from start to finish, primarily because it is not uncommon for the trade to miss the target by a pip or two and, if so, I close it manually. This means I am watching the screen for maybe 5mins to 30mins per trade and maybe 1/2 trades in both the UK and US session - on average about 3/5 trades per day on active days.

If my trade is based on an hourly chart (which is becoming more common for me) then I place the target and stop levels and immediately go shopping/gardening/wash the car, whatever. In this case my screen time is no more than 15 mins per trade setup.

In addition to trade set up and monitoring, I spend about 2-3hours per day assessing the market, daily chart, economic calendars and generally messing around with any new thoughts on chart set-ups (my passion - seems my charts never look the same for more than 2 days in a row :slight_smile: (although the changes are usually quite minor around a core theme)).

All in all, on an active trading day, I am on the screen in total about 4/5 hours of which about 1/2 hours at most are monitoring actual trades. This is probably too much but I enjoy it and I could manage with less. I like short term trading because if I do get tired of screen watching or have something else to do or somewhere to go I don’t have open trades to worry about.

I do admit that in the past I have goggled my trades far too much and only too often closed out winners far too early on a minor pull back. The problem tends to be that one watches the pips rather than the lines and it is psychologically very difficult to watch your trade gain 10 pips and then start to retrace back to breakeven without closing it out and grabbing the last 2 pips of profit - only to see it then gallop straight through what was your original target! We’ve surely all done that.

The answer to this question will really vary based on the strategy the individual trader decides to employ.
For me, I spend between 9-11 hours / day behind the screens, and a minimum of 6 hours on slow days.

For some, the more time the better- for others, impatience can take its toll on your equity. Really is all about finding what works for you. I find the best setups come when there is breadth behind the move and thus good Risk/Reward. I.e. you see global equities selling off, bonds and USD rallying, and a JPY cross is lagging a breakout to the downside. That’s a good opportunity to get short.

Jake

Thank you all above who took the time to put your comments, I do find myself spending almost the whole day on my screens at the moment and started to consider it unhealthy.
However I just am trying to absorb so much information at the moment reading, studying and watching the behaviour or prices move.
I also have all the time in the world at the moment too and so want to give myself the best chance of success.
Im hoping that once I’m a more consistent with successful trades I can in fact start to spend less time on screen.
From the above comments I can really see then that trading strategy and timeframes used is a major factor in how long is spent on the screens.

Thankyou. I think thats just it I have to see what works best for how I intend to trade

Depending on how active the market is and the time-frame I am trading on I watch the charts between 3 and 5 hours a day, sometimes less, sometimes more.

Hardly any. Probably between 30 to 45 minutes a day tops, I spend more time on BP than trading

sounds great now give me your secret recipe.:stuck_out_tongue: lol

No secret, it just depends what sort of trader you are. I have trades running for several days, so once they’re in place all I do is pop in and out when I get a minute to see how they’re doing. Today, for example, I looked first thing to see how they had progressed overnight, had another look after work (1 trade had hit TP and closed) and ill probably look again later this evening. In total, no more than 15 minutes today.

Im only messing I consider myself a newbie but im out of that band now of new guys who belive there is one holy grail to suit all.
Thanks for your feedback.

Seems you are on the right track, Daboss :slight_smile:

As is often overlooked, the holy grail lies within the trader him/herself, not in the external factors. By concentrating on, and applying, the key elements of trading strategy, market choice, personal discipline, risk management, money management, capital accumulation plan, a healthy lifestyle, etc, you are more than likely to succeed with your ambitions :slight_smile:

I am an end of day trader so I only need to look at the charts about 1 hr in the afternoon, 4 to 5 est. ( this includes looking at stocks and commodities) and another 30 min in the evening ( during Asian session) to place or adjust trades. then 1 to 2 hrs each day doing research , and if time permits check out what everyone is talking about here on Babypips :slight_smile:

I trade on daily time frame on almost 25/27 pairs. I analyze when a new daily candle is formed. If I see some trade-able setups I check weekly time frame and some other confluence on them. It’ll take around 30-40 minutes for me every day for analyzing and some time in between they day to have a peek at what’s going around.

We have to learn about the use of the different Time frames in our trading and that will let us know which trade is good and how we would be able to benefit from that trade in the coming times…

It depends on the trader on how he can be in front of the screen. Or maybe how long they should.

from my experience of 6 years it goes like this:

the more time you spend on watching charts the less sucesffull you are/will be in trading

It depends on my PIPs number :stuck_out_tongue:

I think how much time one spends looking at the charts depends on the type of strategy they are using, rather than how experienced they are. Of course, a total newbie should likely spend more time in front of the screen simply because there’s a lot to learn.

My preferred timeframe to trade is 5min tf. Only one pair , usdjpy. My average trade takes about a day to two. 1-3 trades a week or maybe none .